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What Are The Roles of Tenses in English? Please Give Your Own Examples

The document discusses tenses in English and Vietnamese. It explains that in English, tenses are indicated by changing verb endings and are categorized as past, present, and future. Examples of each tense are provided, including simple and continuous forms. In Vietnamese, verbs are not conjugated for tense but context and time words are used instead. While distinctions between future, present, and past are less clear, words like "will/shall" indicate future and "had" indicate past. Examples in Vietnamese demonstrate how context and words like "tomorrow" or "yesterday" convey when an action occurs.

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Hung Tran
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59 views

What Are The Roles of Tenses in English? Please Give Your Own Examples

The document discusses tenses in English and Vietnamese. It explains that in English, tenses are indicated by changing verb endings and are categorized as past, present, and future. Examples of each tense are provided, including simple and continuous forms. In Vietnamese, verbs are not conjugated for tense but context and time words are used instead. While distinctions between future, present, and past are less clear, words like "will/shall" indicate future and "had" indicate past. Examples in Vietnamese demonstrate how context and words like "tomorrow" or "yesterday" convey when an action occurs.

Uploaded by

Hung Tran
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Hello Mrs.

Kim Hang and my classmates,


Here's my answers for the following questions:
1. What are the roles of tenses in English? Please give your own examples.
In English language, tenses play a significant role in constructing a meaningful sentence for the readers.
Tenses are primarily categorized into past tense, present tense and future tense. The tenses are an
important part of English grammar. It shows the time of an action or state of being that is usually shown
by a verb. The verb ending is changed in order to show the present, past or future time. Hence, a tense
act as a verb, so as to indicate what happen when.

It is important to understand the different tenses when it comes to English language. While writing a
sentence, you need to know when to use present tense, past tense or future tense. The words ‘Tense’ is
derived from Latin word ‘tempus’ which mean time. It is mainly used to explain an action or event that is
described by the verb and the time. Let us understand the different tenses that describe an action or
event by changing its form.
1. Present Tense:
•    Simple present tense: It is used to explain an action, event or condition that is happening in the
present. For example: I play or I eat.
•  Present continuous tense: It describes an ongoing action or an action that is still going. For
instance, I am playing or I am eating. 
•    Present perfect tense: It indicates an action that began in the past and continues into the present.
For example, I have played or I have eaten.
•   Present perfect continuous tense: It is used to describe an action that has been taking place for
some time and is still ongoing. For example, I have been playing or I have been eating.

2. Past Tense:
•  Simple past tense: It is used to explain an event or an action that has happened in the past. For
example, I played or I ate.
•  Past continuous tense: It is used to describe an event or an action that is ongoing in the past. For
instance, I was playing or I was eating.
•  Past perfect tense: It refers to an action or event that took place in the past. For example, I had
played or I had eaten.
•  Past perfect continuous tense: It describes a continuing action in the past that began before
another past action began or interrupted the first action. For instance, I had been playing or I had been
eating.

3. Future Tense:
•  Simple future tense: It is used when we plan to do something. For example, I will play or I will eat.
•  Future continuous tense: It describes a continuing action that will happen in the future. In short, it
refers to an action ongoing in the future. For instance, I will be eating at 8 o’clock or I will be playing at 6
o’clock.
•  Future perfect tense: It refers to an action that will happen in the future before another action takes
place. For example, I shall have played before 5 o’clock or I shall have eaten before 9 o’clock.
•  Future perfect continuous tense: It indicates a continuing action, which will be completed at a
specified time in the future. For instance, I shall have been playing or I will have been eating.
2. Does The Vietnamese language have tenses? Please explain and give your own examples for each point.
Like English, Vietnamese also has tenses, but they are expressed differently. Vietnamese verbs are not
conjugated. Instead, verbs in Vietnamese depend on the context of a sentence in order to express tense. In
Vietnamese, the system of tense has no morphological meaning. Both the Present and the Past tense are
unmarked. The future, present and past tense in Vietnamese has no clearly distinguish, sometimes there’s an
opaque distinction among the future, and present and the past in grammar.
To express time relation, we often use extra words:
future tenses: sẽ (will/shall)
near future tenses: sắp (be going to/ be about to)
past tenses: đã (can be omitted for short if we knew the time mentioned already)
progressive tenses: đang
However, we also use adverbs of time to indicate the time when the action happened.
future tenses: ngày mai (tomorrow), ngày mốt (the day after tomorrow), tuần/tháng sau, tuần/tháng tới (next
week/month), ect.
near future tenses: tối nay (tonight), chiều nay (this afternoon), ect.
past tenses: hôm qua (yesterday), tuần/tháng/năm rồi (last week/month/year), trước đây (ago), ect.
progressive tenses: ngay bây giờ (right now), bây giờ (now)

Examples:
- Tôi sẽ gặp anh ấy vào ngày mai. (I will meet him tomorrow.)
- Trời sắp mưa. (It’s going to rain.)
- Tôi đã ăn cơm rồi. (I had my meal.)
- Cậu bé đang chơi với đồ chơi của mình. (The boy is playing with his toys.)

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