English Tenses: All 12 Tenses With a Chart and Examples

English has 12 tenses — or, more precisely, 12 combinations of time and aspect. There are three times (past, present and future) and four aspects (simple, continuous, perfect and perfect continuous). Multiply them and you get the familiar chart.

That's good news: you don't have to learn twelve unrelated rules. Learn what each of the four aspects means, and you can read any box in the chart. This guide gives you the full chart first, then explains each tense with examples, the words that signal it, and the mistakes learners make most.

The English tenses chart

Here are all 12 tenses with the verb work. Read across for time, down for aspect.

Notice the building blocks. Continuous always uses be + -ing. Perfect always uses have + past participle. Perfect continuous combines them: have been + -ing. The time (past, present, future) is carried by the first auxiliary: was / am / will be, had / have / will have.

What the four aspects mean

• Simple — the action as a whole: a fact, a habit, a single finished event. Water boils at 100°C. She called yesterday.
• Continuous — the action in the middle, unfinished, at a particular moment. I'm cooking (now). I was cooking when you called.
• Perfect — the action is complete before a reference point, and we look back at it from there. I've finished (before now). I'd finished before you arrived.
• Perfect continuous — an activity that ran up to a reference point, with the focus on how long. I've been waiting for an hour.

Present tenses

Present simple

Form: base verb (add -s for he / she / it); questions and negatives with do / does.

Use: habits, routines, facts and permanent situations.

Signal words: always, usually, often, sometimes, never, every day, on Mondays.

Present continuous

Form: am / is / are + -ing.

Use: actions happening now or around now, temporary situations, and fixed plans for the future.

Signal words: now, right now, at the moment, today, this week, currently.

Present simple vs continuous is the first tense choice most learners meet: I work in Paris (permanent) vs I'm working in Paris this month (temporary).

Present perfect

Form: have / has + past participle.

Use: life experiences, past actions with a result now, situations that started in the past and continue, recent news.

Signal words: ever, never, just, already, yet, so far, for, since. It's the tense learners find hardest to choose — see the present perfect explained for the full comparison with the past simple.

Present perfect continuous

Form: have / has been + -ing.

Use: an activity that started in the past and is still going on (or has just stopped), with the focus on duration.

Signal words: for, since, how long, all day, lately, recently.

Past tenses

Past simple

Form: verb + -ed (regular) or the irregular past form; questions and negatives with did + base verb.

Use: finished actions at a finished time — the main tense for telling stories.

Signal words: yesterday, last week, in 2019, two days ago, when I was a child.

Past continuous

Form: was / were + -ing.

Use: an action in progress at a moment in the past — often the background to a shorter event in the past simple.

Signal words: while, when, at that time, at 8 o'clock yesterday.

Past perfect

Form: had + past participle.

Use: an action that happened before another past action — "the past before the past".

Signal words: already, before, by the time, after, never … before. More examples in how the past perfect works.

Past perfect continuous

Form: had been + -ing.

Use: an activity that had been going on for some time before a past moment, often to explain a result.

Future tenses

Future simple (will)

Form: will + base verb.

Use: predictions, decisions made at the moment of speaking, offers and promises.

Future continuous

Form: will be + -ing.

Use: an action that will be in progress at a moment in the future.

Future perfect

Form: will have + past participle.

Use: an action that will be complete before a point in the future.

Future perfect continuous

Form: will have been + -ing.

Use: how long an activity will have lasted at a future point. It's the rarest tense in everyday speech.

Which tenses you actually need first

The chart treats all twelve equally, but real English doesn't. A handful do most of the work in conversation, emails and stories:

1. Present simple — facts, routines, opinions.
2. Past simple — anything that happened.
3. Present continuous — now, this week, plans.
4. Present perfect — experiences, news, "how long".
5. Will and going to — the future.

Learn those well and you can say almost anything. Add the past continuous and past perfect for telling stories; the future continuous, future perfect and the perfect continuous forms are mostly for fine shades of meaning and can wait. Roughly speaking, the first group belongs to A1–A2, the rest to B1–B2 (see CEFR levels explained).

Signal words at a glance

Signal words are a helpful starting point, not a law: I've already eaten and I already ate are both used, the second mostly in American English.

Common mistakes with tenses

• Present tense for "how long": I live here for five years. → I've lived here for five years.
• Present perfect with a finished time: I have seen her yesterday. → I saw her yesterday.
• Continuous with state verbs: I'm knowing the answer. → I know the answer. (Know, like, want, believe, own and need are usually simple.)
• Will after when / if: When I will arrive, I'll call you. → When I arrive, I'll call you.
• Forgetting -s: He work in Rome. → He works in Rome.
• Past form after did: Did you went? → Did you go?

Quick check

Put the verb in the right tense. Answers are below.

1. Listen! Somebody ___ (knock) at the door.
2. I ___ (never / be) to Canada.
3. She ___ (wash) the car when it started to rain.
4. By the time we got to the station, the train ___ (leave).
5. Water ___ (freeze) at 0°C.
6. This time next week we ___ (lie) on a beach.
7. How long ___ you ___ (wait)? — About twenty minutes.
8. We ___ (move) here in 2015.