Future Continuous
The Future Continuous puts you inside a future moment, watching an action unfold. <em>Will be + verb-ing</em> lets you describe ongoing activities at a specific future time, background events in narratives, and polite enquiries.
Future with Going To
Two powerful uses in one form: <em>going to</em> expresses plans you've already made <em>and</em> predictions backed by visible evidence. Master <em>am/is/are going to</em> and you'll communicate future intentions with natural, fluent English.
Future Perfect Continuous
The Future Perfect Continuous answers one question about the future: <em>how long will an activity have been in progress by a specific future moment?</em> Master <em>will have been + verb-ing</em> and you'll express ongoing future processes with the precision that C1 writing and speaking demand.
Future Perfect Tense
The Future Perfect lets you stand at a future moment and look back at something already finished. Master <em>will have + past participle</em> and you'll be able to talk about deadlines, durations, and completed future plans with precision.
Future Simple
The Future Simple uses <em>will</em> + base verb to make predictions, spontaneous decisions, promises, and statements about the future. It is the most versatile future form in English.
Future with Will
Will is English's most versatile future form: predictions, spontaneous decisions, promises, offers, and threats all use the same simple structure, will + base verb.
Past Continuous Tense
How to form it, when to use it, and how to tell it apart from the past simple.
Past Perfect Continuous
The Past Perfect Continuous answers one precise question: <em>how long had something been happening before a specific past moment?</em> Master <em>had been + verb-ing</em> and you'll be able to set up background activity in narratives and explain past causes with the depth that B2 writing demands.
Past Perfect Tense
The Past Perfect is your "further back in the past" tense. When you're already telling a story in the past and you need to refer to something that happened <em>before</em> that, use <em>had + past participle</em>.
Past Simple Tense
Learn how to talk about completed actions, past events, and finished states.
Perfect Continuous Tenses
The Perfect Continuous family (<em>have been -ing</em>, <em>had been -ing</em>, <em>will have been -ing</em>) puts the spotlight on duration and ongoing process rather than a finished result.
Present Continuous Tense
How to form it, when to use it, and how to choose between present continuous and present simple.
Present Perfect Tense
The present perfect is one of the most versatile and most misunderstood tenses in English. This page shows how to form it, when to use it (and when to use the past simple instead), and the signal words ever, never, just, already, yet, for, and since.
Present Simple Tense
The foundation of English: learn how to talk about habits, permanent states, and universal truths with clarity and confidence.
The English tense and aspect system
English tense and aspect interact to communicate not just when something happens, but how the speaker views that event: as complete or ongoing, as relevant to the present or purely historical, as a habit or a single occurrence. The twelve-form English tense system encodes these distinctions systematically across three time references (past, present, future) and four aspects (simple, continuous, perfect, perfect continuous).
In practice, certain combinations are far more frequent and communicatively important than others: the present simple, past simple, present perfect, and present continuous account for the vast majority of tense use in everyday English. The rarer forms (past perfect continuous, future perfect continuous) appear mainly in formal writing, academic texts, and narrative fiction.
The guides on this page cover each tense in sequence, building from the core four at A2 level through to the examined perfect continuous and future perfect forms at B2 and C1. Each guide is structured consistently: form table, uses with examples, signal words, and a comparison with the most commonly confused tense.