Verb Forms and Tenses

Verbs come in different forms and those forms are partly determined by the tense of the verb.

The five forms of verbs are:

For example:

The verb sing has the following five forms:

sing, sings, singing, sang, sung

For most regular verbs, two of those forms are the same.

For example:

The verb walk has the following forms:

walk, walks, walking, walked (past and past participle).

For some irregular verbs, three of those forms are the same.

For example:

The verb cut has the following forms:

cut (base, past, and past participle), cuts, cutting

1. The base and -s forms of the verb are used as part of the present tense, for actions that are happening in the present.

For example:

2. The -ing form of the verb is used as part of the present progressive tense to show that something is happening at the moment.

For example:

3. The past form of the verb is used as part of the past tense, for actions that happened in the past.

For example:

4. The past participle form of the verb is used as part of the past perfect tense to show actions that are continuous or happened over a period of time. It is usually combined with the verb has/have.

For example: