Verb Tense Basics


To ace the verb tense questions in the SAT and the ACT, we need to have the fundamentals down first.

Essentially, there are three basic time-frames: past, present, and future.

When we want to express an event that happened in the past, we simply need to write it in the past, using past verbs. 

However, what if we want to express another event that happened before the first event in the same sentence? Or what if we need to express another event that began in the past and continues to the present?


To do so, we must utilize different verb tenses.


There are fundamentally 12 verb tenses in the English language, each tense expressing a different time frame.


Lucky for us, the SAT and the ACT don't test students about verb tenses in depth, and there are only a few tenses we have to understand thoroughly.



Before we begin our fundamental tense lessons, however, we must first understand this idea:

Has studied.

Surprisingly, many of us believe that the verb "has studied" is a past tense because of the word "studied."

This is wrong.

While "has studied" can express an event that has happened sometime in the past, grammatically, it belongs to the "present tense." 

Easy rule to remember is this: when you see a verb phrase (a verb with two words or more), always look at the first part of the verb.


In "Has studied," the first word is "has." Do not let the word "studied" fool you. This is a present tense.

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