Gramatica limbii engleze

PRESENT TENSE SIMPLE/PRESENT TENSE CONTINUOUS

Present Tense Simple

is used to express: Present tense Continuous

is used to express:

1. Habits and routines

e.g Karen usually deals with the clients.

I often get junk emails from unknown . companies. 1. Events happening at the moment of speaking or around the moment of speaking

e.g. He is having breakfast at the moment.

It is snowing hard today.

2. Permanent/general situations

e.g I work for a big foreign trade firm.

My parents live in England. 2. Temporary/particular situations

e.g. I am working in Paris for two months.

I am living in England for a while.

3. Facts that are always true

e.g. The sun sets in the West.

Water boils at 100 C.

3. Annoying actions/complaints

e.g. My car is always breaking down!

You are always arriving late on

Fridays.

4. Timetables and programmes

e.g. British Airways flight BA309 leaves

Rome at 7.45 and lands in London at 8.55

School starts on the 15th of September.

My plane takes off at 2 pm tomorrow. 4. Fixed future arangements

e.g We are spending our holiday in Greece

next summer.

They are moving to the new premises in

April.

Time expressions :

- every day/week/month/year etc.

- usually, always, ever, never, often, seldom, sometimes. Time expressions :

- y

PAST TENSE SIMPLE/PAST TENSE CONTINUOUS

Past Tense Simple

Is used to express: Past Tense Continuous

Is used to express:

1.An action completed at a stated time in the past

e.g. The merchant bank went bankrupt in 1997.

The first world war started in 1914.

2. Actions which happened one after another (a sequence of actions)

e.g. He entered the office, picked up the phone and started to talk.

Yesterday/last week/ago 1. An action that was in progress at a particular moment in the past.

e.g. At 9 o’clock last night she was talking on the phone.

What were you doing this time yesterday?

2. Two or more actions which were happening at the same time in the past

e.g. They were talking to the clients while I was filling in a form.

While, whereas, as

3. With non-continuous verbs (like, love, hate, prefer, believe, remember, think, understand, forget, know, want, mean, need, seem, see, feel, taste, smell etc).

e.g. She wanted to buy a mansion but she couldn’t afford it.

. 3. A past action that was in progress when another action interrupted it.

e.g. While she was explaining her proposal somebody interrupted her.

4. Past actions which won’t happen again.

e.g. Charles Dickens wrote a lot of novels.

4. Past actions which describe the background to the events in a story.

e.g. We were skiing on the slope. It was snowing heavily…

• The Past Tense Simple is often used with past time expressions:

a) with prepositions: - at two o’clock/at the end of the month/on Christmas

day

- on Monday/on the 15th of April/on New year’s Day

- in May/winter/1996/the 1980s

b) without preposition: yesterday/yesterday morning/last week/last night/a few days ago

past tense simple

I worked hard last week.

Did you work hard last week?

I didn’t work hard last week.

He went to the Trade Fair two days ago

Did he go to

He didn’t go

Past Tense Continuous

S+to be +Ving I was reading

Were you reading

I wasn’t reading