Using the present simple for storytelling and commentary
Though the present simple’s main use is for general rules, and grammatically represents timeless facts, native speakers often use it in an colloquial setting for storytelling. This can be to recount a past event, a film or book plot, or for running commentaries, as...How to use the past perfect to build narratives
Following on from my article about using the past perfect to demonstrate sequences, let’s look at how it can build an effective narrative. The past perfect can help create atmosphere, feeding new information into a narrative at more flexible times. The past perfect is...Creating past event sequences with the past perfect
To give a little structure to the different examples of past tenses uses I’ve highlighted in some of my narrative articles, here’s a quick explanation of how the past perfect can be used to create past event sequences (adapted from The English Tenses Practical Grammar...Contractions and Different Tense Forms
The different English tenses use a delightfully wide variety of forms, in the simple, continuous, perfect and perfect continuous for the past, present, and future. And, on top of that, we use those forms in positive, negative, question and negative forms. Now, when we...Making predictions with the future tense
One of the many uses of the future tenses in English is to make predictions – to suggest, or guess, something is likely to happen in the future. We usually make predictions with the future simple forms of will (It will be a good day.) or going to (Our team are going...Want to Master English?
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