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Tenses and actions
Tense | Example | Explanation |
Present simple | I play football every week. | Here you want to say that it happens regularly.
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Present continuous | I'm playing football now. | Here you want to say that it is happening at the moment.
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Past simple | I played football yesterday. | You did it yesterday, it happened in the past., the action is finished.
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Past continuous | I was playing football the whole evening. | You were doing it in the past. It's not sure whether the action was finished or not.
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Present Perfect | I have just played football. | You have just finished it. So it has a connection to the present. Maybe your clothes are dirty.
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Present Perfect Continuous | I have been playing football for 2 hours. | You want to say how long you have been doing it. (You started in the past and it continues up to the present. |
Past Perfect | I had played football when Susan came. | The two actions are related to each other: you had finished to play football and after that the girl arrived.
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Past Perfect Continuous | I had been playing football when Susan came. | Here you want to point out how long you had been doing it before the girl came.
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will future | I will play football next week. | This is a prediction, you can probably do something else.
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going to future | I'm going to play football this afternoon. | This is a plan you've made.
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Future Continuous | I will be playing football next Sunday. | You do it every Sunday (as usual)
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Future Perfect | I will have played football by tomorrow. | You will have done it before tomorrow.
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Conditional Simple | I would play football. | You'll probably do it.
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Conditional Continuous | I would be playing football. | You'll probably do it. Here you concentrate more on the progress of the action.
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Conditional Perfect | I would have played football. | You'll probably have finished playing football at a special time in the future. Here you concentrate on the fact (football).
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Conditional Perfect Continuous | I would have been playing football. | You'll probably have finished playing football at a special time in the future. Here you concentrate on the progress of playing (football).
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Exercise : write the verbs in the right tense

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