All grammatical tenses have subcategories called ASPECTS. An aspect does not tell us about time; it refers to the duration of an event within a particular tense seen from the speaker’s point of view. There are four aspects: SIMPLE, CONTINUOUS, PERFECT and PERFECT CONTINUOUS and with three times they make the 12 English tenses.

English verb tenses give many details about time and action such as:

– Is the action finished or unfinished?
– How long did the action happen?
– Was the action repeated or a single event?
– Did the action happened at a known or unknown time?
– Has the action happened before another one?
– Is the action planned or spontaneous?

Note that some tenses may refer to a different time than that is expressed in their names. The present continuous can refer both to present or future time and the past simple can refer to the past or present time.

• I’m doing my homework. (present reference)
• I’m doing my homework tonight. (future reference)
• I saw her the other day. (past reference)
• If I saw her, I would run away. (present reference)

Learning the English tense system is tricky and intimidating for some learners. Very few languages have such a complex system to talk about the time. For example, Chinese has only ONE tense, while some other languages express the time only through adverbs. Mastering all tenses – especially if your native language does not have such subtle distinctions – might take years. So, be patient.