{"id":6505,"date":"2016-04-17T14:19:18","date_gmt":"2016-04-17T21:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/sat\/?p=6505"},"modified":"2018-07-21T07:27:46","modified_gmt":"2018-07-21T14:27:46","slug":"sat-grammar-study-guide-verb-tenses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/sat\/sat-grammar-study-guide-verb-tenses\/","title":{"rendered":"SAT Grammar Study Guide: Verb Tenses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Verbs are essential parts of sentences. They are what gives us all the action in everything we say or write. Unfortunately, precisely because they are so essential, verbs can be complex, and there are several pitfalls we can fall into when we use them. One of these, using the wrong verb tense, appears pretty regularly among the commonly tested SAT grammar rules<\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

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What are verb tenses?<\/h2>\n

Tenses are forms of verbs that we use to tell us when something happened or was done. Without them, telling each other stories would be very frustrating because it would never be clear what was happening when or how events were related.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The 12 tenses<\/h2>\n

Here\u2019s a quick run-down of the twelve English tenses, using the verb \u201cto shake\u201d as our example.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Tense Name<\/th>\nPast<\/th>\nPresent<\/th>\nFuture<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Simple<\/td>\nshook<\/td>\nshake(s)<\/td>\nwill shake<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Progressive<\/td>\nwas shaking<\/td>\nis shaking<\/td>\nwill be shaking<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Perfect<\/td>\nhad shaken<\/td>\nhas\/have shaken<\/td>\nwill have shaken<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Perfect Progressive<\/td>\nhad been shaking<\/td>\nhas\/have been shaking<\/td>\nwill have been shaking<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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Simple tense<\/h2>\n

The simple tense is the plain, everyday way of using verbs. This is the default whenever you are talking about something that happened yesterday, is happening today, or will happen tomorrow.<\/span><\/p>\n

Example 1:<\/strong> <\/span><\/p>\n