INTRODUCING THE ENGLISH PRESENT SIMPLE VERB TENSE (LANGUAGE TIPS #1)

HULLO!

Source: Symphony in Orange, Roses,Pixabay

 

LET’S TALK ABOUT THE PRESENT TENSE!

The Present Tense is also known as the Present Simple, because it’s supposed to be so easy! My students frequently find that it’s NOT so simple.

To begin with, there’s the confusion about “the infinitive” and “the base form or main form”.

In English, the infinitives can be recognized because they have “to”. Spanish speakers learning English are often taught that the verbs always have these two words, like To Read, To Write, To Swim, and so on

But most explanations also say that the Present (Simple) is derived from the “base or main form of the verb”.

And that refers to the infinitive without to.

So when you see a regular verb expressed as a list of its main elements, the famous three word list, you will probably see:

Like  -  Liked  -  Liked  

That’s the Present (Simple) = Like, then the Past (Simple) = Liked, and then the Past Participle = Liked

All clear?

Then we have the problem of the famous “s” in the third person singular (he, she, it)

So we say that the Present (Simple) is derived from the main or base form of the verb, and that we add an “s” for the third person singular.

So let’s work all this out with an example. Let’s use the verb “To  live”. We can also say “the verb live” if we are thinking of the base form.

Infinitive: = To live.  Base or main form = Live.  General form for the Present (Simple) = Live

Form for the third person singular = Lives

I live – you live – he lives – she lives – It lives – we live – you live – they live

There, that’s simple enough!

♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣

Yes, but wait, there’s more! This was all about the Affirmative Form. What about the Negative and Interrogative Forms? Ah well, there we need to use an auxiliary verb, which in the case of the Present Simple is the verb “do”

This is another little problem when learning English as a Second Language (ESL). We find that it is a rather lazy language. Where Spanish would have a specific word for something, English borrows words with one meaning and uses it for something else!

Added to this, the verb “Do” has a slight variation in the third person singular. It does not just add an “s”, it adds “es” and the pronunciation also changes. Ah well, that’s English for you, a mystery!

So the verb “Do” in the Present Simple is as follows:

I do – you do – he does – she does – it does – we do – you do – they do

   

Now we can create the negative form of our initial verb Live.

I do not live – you do not live – he does not live – she does not live – it does not live – we do not live – you do not live – they do not live

Here we have another mystery! The “s” in the third person migrates!

Affirmative = She lives.    /       Negative = She does not live

So what happened? The famous “s” shifts from the main verb  “lives” to the auxiliary verb “does” and disappears from the verb “live”. We say that in the negative form, the main verb changes back to the base form!

And what about the Interrogative Form? Here we have the same elements as the negative form, BUT we change the order so that we start with the auxiliary “do/does” and then continue with the pronoun. The rest remains the same.

Let’s try it!

Do I live? – Do you live? – Does he live? – Does she live? – Does it live? – Do we live – Do you live? – Do they live?

YOU LIVE HERE

Source: Pixabay, Public Domain

YOU DON'T LIVE HERE

Source: Pixabay, Public Domain

DO YOU LIVE HERE?

Source: Pixabay, Public Domain

 

But wait, there’s another trick to the Interrogative Form. The particular structure that is presented above corresponds to the form of a “YES/NO Question”, that is a question that only allows two answers, Yes or No. These questions are also called “closed questions” 

Talking about “closed questions” concepts such as this one is important for the critical thinking questions of the GRE or the GMAT, (More about that on future posts).

So obviously there will also be “open questions”.  So what’s so important about this?

Well, the closed questions have a finite number of possible answers. In this case, just YES or NO.

Open questions, on the other hand can have an undetermined amount of possible answers. Not only do they allow various different answers, we usually don’t know exactly how many are possible.

Another detail: The open questions usually have the so-called question words, that is: What, Where, Who, How, When, How much, How many, Whose and so on.

Let’s look at some examples.

If I ask: “Do you live in London?” the answer can be “Yes I do” or “No, I don’t” and that’s it!

If I ask: “Where do you live?  I have no way of knowing exactly what the answer is going to be. In a group of ten persons, I could possibly get ten different answers of a type that we can’t predict beforehand. But on the other hand, maybe I will get less answers if some are repeats!

♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣

So, was the Present (Simple) really simple? And we’ve barely started to study the details, there’s a lot more.

Before I close this post, let’s talk about contractions. These refer to certain abbreviated forms that appear throughout the use of some expressions in the English language.

We have them in the Negative Forms shown above. A short review is as follows:

 

I do not live = I don’t live   /   you do not live = you don’t live   /   he does not live = he doesn’t live

And so on.

With reference to tests such as the GRE, TOEFL, etc., you should never use contractions in any of the formal writing tasks, as in the case of the essays. A possible exception could be if you are writing an imitation of somebody’s way of speaking

BUT – you will have contractions in the Listening sections of some of these Tests, and in some test questions that are based on dialogues that imitate natural speech So you do need to know about them!

There will be more details on my next post! Don’t give up!

♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣♣

 

© 2013  joanveronica  (Joan Robertson)

I will be very happy to receive your comments! Just click the word “comments” lower down.