THE PRESENT SIMPLE TENSE

Do you know how to make the present simple?

Watch the video here or read the explanation and do the exercises below.

• If you'd prefer to learn about how to USE the Present Simple jump to this page.
• Or, click here for all the practice exercises about this tense.

Simple present tense with 'be'

Here's the positive form (positive means a normal sentence, not a negative or a question. This is sometimes called 'affirmative')

Click here to practise making the positive with 'be'.


Next, here's the negative. It's very easy. You only add 'not'.

Click here to practise making the negative with 'be'.

And finally let's talk about the question form of the present simple with 'be'.

Firstly, here's the 'yes / no' question form:

Click here to practise making yes / no questions with 'be'.

If you'd like to make a 'wh' question, you just put the question word at the front:

Click here to practise making 'wh' questions with 'be' .

Click here to practise making positive, negative and question forms with 'be' (exercise 1).
Click here to practise making positive, negative and question forms with 'be' (exercise 2).

Present simple tense with other verbs

The positive is really easy. It's just the verb with an extra 's' if the subject is 'he', 'she', or 'it'. Let's take the verb 'play' as an example:

• Don't forget the 's'! Even really advanced students do this!
• For a few verbs, there is a spelling change before the 's'. For example, 'study' becomes 'studies'. Click here for a list of these verbs.
• There are also few verbs which are irregular in the present simple:
  1. 'have' becomes 'has'
  2. 'do' becomes 'does'
  3. 'go' becomes 'goes'

Click here to practise making the positive form for other verbs (exercise 1)
Click here to practise making the positive form for other verbs (exercise 2)

To make the negative form, you need to use 'do not' (don't) or ' does not' (doesn't).

Click here to practise making the negative (exercise 1)
Click here to practise making the negative (exercise 2)

How about the question form of the present simple tense?

We use 'do' or 'does' before the subject to make the 'yes / no' question:

Click here to practise making yes / no questions.

Just like with 'be', if you'd like to make a 'wh' question, you just put the question word at the front: