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Contributor: Elephango Editors. Lesson ID: 10369
Ready to time travel? Learn how verbs show when actions happen—today, yesterday, or tomorrow—and become a master of verb tenses with fun activities that connect to your life and future!
Imagine you have a superpower that lets you jump between different times—yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
You’d use different words for the actions you did, are doing, and will do! That’s what verb tenses do—they show when an action happens.
Verbs are action words, and tenses tell when the action happens.
By using different tenses, you show whether something is happening right now, has already happened, or will happen in the future.
Here are the three main verb tenses.
Present Tense
This shows actions happening right now or things that occur regularly.
The dog barks at the mailman every day.
The action is happening right now and is something the dog does regularly.
Past Tense
This tells us about actions that already happened.
The dog barked at the mailman yesterday.
Since the action already took place in the past, you use barked instead of barks.
Future Tense
This shows actions that will happen in the future.
The dog will bark at the mailman tomorrow.
Since the action will happen in the future, you use will bark.
By changing the verb, you change the tense, which shows when the action occurs!
Watch the video below to review the three verb tenses.
Head to the Got It? section to show off what you learned!
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