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Lesson: English Grammar - 12

Verbs: The Tension of Tenses

[Page 12 of 28]

The rules that govern verbs are plentiful and often complicated. Take comfort from the fact that you can usually figure out verb tense errors - whether the verb should be in the present, past, future, conditional, or whatever other tense - based on the meaning of the rest of the sentence. Also, if you're a native speaker of English or have spent a great deal of time listening to English, you'll usually be able to hear what "sounds" right if you're paying attention.

A sentence's verb tense can be flawed in many different ways, so it's less important to look for particular flaws than to isolate the sentence's verbs and see whether they make sense together. Know in advance that every verb in a particular sentence does not need to have the same tense to be correct. Pay attention to shifts in the direction of the sentence; don't look to see whether the tenses are the same, but whether they make sense together.

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