Consistent Verb Tenses

Consider how to correctly use verb tenses in paragraphs/stories, when we are writing AND speaking. One important idea is that we choose what the time/tense of our story/paragraph is from our Topic Sentence. Then ALL of the sentences must match that time/tense, unless there is a clear reason why we need to change the tense. For example, if I said, “Today I am Zooming with my ESL class, but yesterday I Zoomed with my Speech class.” That sentence talks about 2 different days/times, and so my verbs must reflect/match that.

The Simple Present = fact or habit

The Simple Past = an action that happened at a SPECIFIC time in the past and stopped.

The Present Perfect = an action that happened in the past, but when it happened is not important, for 3 possible reasons: 1. maybe I don’t remember when it happened; 2. maybe it repeated in the past; 3. maybe it didn’t stop, so it started in the past but MAYBE continues in the present.

Any questions? THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT TO COMMUNICATE CORRECTLY IN ENGLISH. Have fun with your verb tenses!