Verb Tenses and Passives

Overview

Class Central Tips

This is the first course in the Learn English: Advanced Grammar and Punctuation specialty. In this course, you will review the verb tenses that you learned in beginning English classes and learn about a few tenses you may not know very well. In all, you'll cover all 12 of the English verb tenses and passive verb forms. Most importantly, you'll learn how to blend these tenses, which is what native speakers frequently do. This course is vital to your becoming a more fluent English speaker. Please note that the free version of this class gives you access to all of the instructional videos and handouts. The peer feedback and quizzes are only available in the paid version.

Syllabus

Simple, Progressive, and Perfect Verb Tenses Review

In the first week of this course, you will get to know your classmates and review the verb tenses of English that you have probably learned before. It's always important to review and make sure your foundation is solid before learning new grammar. Use this week to fill in any gaps you have in your understanding of nine verb tenses of English.

Perfect Progressive Tenses

This week, you'll learn about the final three verb tenses in English. Then you will be familiar with all 12 English verb tenses. These will combine the perfect tenses with the progressive tenses. Because you already know those tenses, learning these new ones should be fairly easy.

Passives and Perfect Modals

In this week, you'll learn about some more complicated verbs. Passives and perfect modals will take what you already know about verb tenses and add some more layers to it. Studying these will improve your fluency in written and spoken English.

Blending Tenses

In the final week of the course, you'll learn about one of the most difficult but necessary aspects of verb tenses. You will learn how to blend or mix them to talk about the past, present, and future naturally. Learning to do this will help you become a more fluent speaker and writer of English.