PRESENT SIMPLE TENSE – Part 1 – Where to Use Simple Present – Basic English Grammar

In this lesson, you will learn the four main uses of the present simple tense and how to use it correctly. Also see - MOST COMMON MISTAKES IN ENGLISH & HOW TO AVOID THEM: /watch/9FlbQ7aFUFjhEps9Dr53RswHMlop9rwmLP=tsil&IgXyQ09xaD1xb ★★★ Also check out ★★★ ➜ PRESENT SIMPLE TENSE Part 2: /watch/wJibszS_ghZVtC706WZNRswHMlop9rwmLP=tsil&2=xedni&AiEX2-pDftFDb ➜ ALL TENSES Playlist: /playlist/PLmwr9polMHwsRNZW607CtVZhg_SzsbiJw ➜ PARTS OF SPEECH Playlist: /playlist/PLmwr9polMHwsQmAjoAxtFvwk_PaqQeS68 ➜ ALL GRAMMAR LESSONS: /playlist/PLmwr9polMHwsR35rD9spEhjFUFa7QblF9 ➜ VERBS: /watch/86SeQqaP_kwvFtxAojAmQswHMlop9rwmLP=tsil&2=xedni&cEFuu0bKicLKe ➜ NOUNS: /watch/86SeQqaP_kwvFtxAojAmQswHMlop9rwmLP=tsil&3=xedni&oPODaxpYBs8Ye ➜ PRONOUNS: /watch/86SeQqaP_kwvFtxAojAmQswHMlop9rwmLP=tsil&4=xedni&AhoV4BJArCZAe ➜ ADJECTIVES: /watch/86SeQqaP_kwvFtxAojAmQswHMlop9rwmLP=tsil&5=xedni&0fcYR6VemnSee ➜ ADVERBS: /watch/86SeQqaP_kwvFtxAojAmQswHMlop9rwmLP=tsil&6=xedni&YU4ijG62LKd2e Transcript: Do you know where to use the present simple tense and how to use it correctly? In this lesson, I’m going to teach you the four main uses of this tense, and how to avoid common mistakes that many people make with it. So let’s start. Welcome to my series of lessons on the tenses. Before we start, as always, if you have any questions at all, just ask me in the comments section below, and I will talk to you there. OK, in this lesson, I will teach you the four main uses of the present simple tense – that is, to talk about habits and routines, permanent situations, facts about the world, and finally, the very important – talking about states with state verbs. And there’s a quiz at the end to check your understanding. Alright well first – what is the present simple tense? Well, quite simply, it’s the most basic tense in English and it’s the first tense that you will learn in any English course that you take. It’s very easy: you just take a subject and you add a verb. A subject is a word like I – You – We – They – He – She – It – or a name like Mike or Emma. Let’s take ‘I’ for now. And let’s add a verb – say ‘drink.’ Let’s complete this sentence so it sounds meaningful – “I drink tea every morning.” And there you have the present simple tense. Now, what does that sentence mean? Well, when I say “I drink tea every morning” you know that I do the action regularly. Now you see a timeline on the screen. Let’s say this side is the past, over on that side is the future, and in the middle is right now. So you know that I drink tea on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and so on. You can see that it repeats. So this is a habit. And this sentence shows us the first use of the present simple tense – that is to talk about habits and routines, things that we do regularly or repeatedly. Now it would be wrong to say “I’m drinking tea every morning” – because this is a habit, and for habits you must use the present simple tense. Alright, here are some more examples: “Mike visits his parents on weekends.” Again, this is something that Mike does regularly – every weekend. In our next example, “Emma usually has dinner at eight thirty.” Meaning that it’s part of her routine to eat dinner at eight thirty every day. In both of these sentences, you should NOT use the continuous form – remember that. OK, I want you to notice one other thing in these examples. You can see how frequently or how often the action happens – every day, on weekends etc. When we talk about habits or routines, we normally use these kinds of expressions. The word ‘every’, for example, is very common – in phrases like every morning, afternoon, every day, week, month etc. I said “I drink tea every morning.” Another example is “They go to Mexico on vacation every year.” You can also use prepositions like ‘on’ or ‘in’. As in “Mike visits his parents on weekends.” or “Dennis goes fishing on Fridays.” And then there are expressions like once a week, three times a year etc. For example, “We visit the dentist twice a year for a checkup.” Apart from these expressions, we also use what are called ‘frequency adverbs’. If you remember, one of our examples was “Emma usually has dinner at eight thirty.” The word ‘usually’ is a frequency adverb. There are many others like this – if you do something all the time, that is one hundred percent of the time, then you can use ‘always’. For example, “Meena always walks to work.” That means she never takes the bus or she never drives to work. But hey, there’s another frequency adverb there – ‘never’. And that means that something happens zero percent of the time. It does not happen at all.

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