Introduction

I have created some new symbols and timelines especially for this English tense system mind map.

Time lines and symbols help you understand different tenses and other grammar points more easily.

Here are the symbols I use in this mind map:

English verb tenses – 4 simple symbols

I looked all over the internet and could not find any symbols I liked so I created my own for you!

Creating the perfect symbols to describe all the English verb tenses is very difficult, maybe impossible! But I tried 😀

My system uses only three basic elements: an arrow and a dot.

A Purple Dot

This represents a specific point in time.

A Horizontal Orange Arrow

This represents an activity in progress or a time period.

A Vertical Green Arrow

This emphasises the main point in time we are interested in.

NOTE: I use the word continuous in this article. Some people prefer the word progressive. They are, effectively, the same thing.

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The Simple Tenses

The simple tenses are represented as a purple dot on a line, symbolising their ‘instant’ moment in time nature.

The green arrow is to draw our attention to the point in time we are most interested in.

I also added a smaller, paler dot on either side of the big one to include the ‘habitual, repeating action’ function. Bam!

One of my goals was to use exactly the same symbol for the past, present and future versions of the tense or aspect.

There are some problems with this, because tenses are not that simple! But first of all I want you to see the similarities between tenses in the same ‘family’.

It can be very confusing when we talk about all the little differences and variations between different tenses. I wanted to avoid this.

Quick Explanation

In the past, the simple tense shows a specific, finished event, such as a holiday, where the duration may not be known: ‘I lived in Australia when I was a boy.’

It can also be used to represent repeating past actions, such as: ‘I went to the cinema every Saturday morning’.

In the present, its use is the same, with the big purple dot representing something that is true now: ‘I live in Paris.’ and the series of dots indicating present habits: ‘I go swimming with my son every Sunday afternoon.’

In the future, we have something which will be true in the future, or a future habit: ‘I will write to every week…’

The Continuous Tenses

For this I used another extremely simple representation to show the idea of an event or action in progress at a given point in time.

An orange horizontal arrow stands for the action, with the purple dot, highlighted by the green arrow, indicating the precise point in time we are focusing on.

In the past, this means that something (the orange arrow) was happening before, during and even continuing after another specific past event (shown by the purple dot – without a time duration) happened: ‘I was watching television when the phone rang.’

Maybe I continued watching television after the phone stopped ringing, it’s perfectly possible.

In the present, the action is happening as we speak, right now. It started sometime in the past and will finish sometime in the future: ‘I’m doing my homework.’

For future uses, it’s something that will be going on, or in progress at some future point in time. For example, ‘I’ll be working when you arrive, so I’ll see you when I finish.’

So as not to complicate things, this diagram doesn’t show the idea of doing things around a point in time but not necessarily at that precise point in time. Such as: ‘I’m taking salsa classes’, said at a dinner conversation. Adding more dots to this very simple (and clear) diagram would only have confused things.

The Perfect Tenses

Now this is where things start to get interesting; I decided to use two dots at full intensity!

My idea is to show that we are linking two points in time. Simple.

Actually, when teaching this, I use another diagram with an ‘eye’ with a dotted line looking back from the right to the left – in other words, looking back ‘into the past’).

Here I wanted to keep things simple. The green arrow is where we imagine ourselves as we look back into the past.

The thing all the perfect tenses share is this linking of two points in time. More precisely, there’s a sort of looking back in time from one point to an earlier point.

This is often so see how long something has been continuing or how long a certain state or fact has been in existence, such as ‘How long have you known Sally?’ or ‘How long have you lived in France?’

We often don’t mention both of the points explicitly.

We say ‘I’ve lived here for almost ten years.’ instead of ‘I’ve lived here from the 13th September 2005 until today, the 29th August 2015.’ Again, I simplified.

In contrast to the compound (perfect continuous) tenses below, the perfect simple tenses don’t tend to focus so much on the duration of an event. They are more about the fact that there are two significant points in time, one of which happened before the other.

Of course, we are often interested in the length of time between these points: ‘I have lived in Paris since 1993 / for 22 years.’ (see perfect continuous tenses section below for more details) but frequently we are not: ‘I’ve never been to China.’ / ‘Have you finished your homework yet?’ / ‘Damn! I think I’ve lost my ticket.’

The past perfect simple links two points in time, both in the past. This tense tells us which event happened first. ‘I’d already finished the report when my boss got back.‘

The present perfect simple links the present to a point earlier in time. In other words it links the present to the past. This tense is, of course, hugely important in English and is one of the most difficult for learners of other languages to understand and use correctly.

The future perfect simple is exactly the same in that it links two points in time. Here, we position ourselves at some point in the future, and, as usual, ‘look back’ to see how long something will have been true, or will have been the case, by this point: ‘I’ll have watered all the plants by the time you get back, don’t worry.’

One thing to note with the future perfect simple is that the second point, the one we look back to, can be earlier but still in the future, in the present, or even in the past relative to today.

As a true example:

Past Perfect: ‘In the year 2000 I had lived in France for 17 years.’

Present Perfect: ‘At the moment, as I write this in 2015, I have lived in France for 22 years.’

Future Perfect: ‘When I’m 64 I will have lived in France for 36 years!’

The Compound Tenses

Finally, the ones which make some students go crazy: the dreaded perfect continuous tenses!

They’re not that bad actually.In fact, there might be a direct translation between a tense in your own language and English, especially if your mother tongue is European language.

Anyway, the symbol I invented combines the main characteristics of the perfect tenses (two points linked in time – the purple dots) and the continuous tenses (an event or situation with duration – the orange arrow).

The purple dot on the left (the start of the time period) is smaller and paler, because it is often less important than in the perfect simple tenses.

Also, the orange arrow, indicating the activity in progress, is interrupted at the purple dot shown by the green arrow but potentially carries on after it. This is shown by the dotted orange line to the right of the purple dot.

This is because activities are not always stopped by the event or point in time represented by the big purple dot and the green arrow.

Phew, still with me? OK 😀

For the past tense version, it shows an activity that was in progress up until a point in the past: ‘I had been training for over a year when I won my first race.’

In the present perfect continuous, it’s usually for activities which have been going on up till now, and may still continue into the future: ‘Why are you hot? – I’ve been running.’ / ‘She’s been cleaning the house all morning, and still hasn’t finished.’

The future perfect continuous form is one I like to amaze my students with. Because they can understand it!

‘Does this tense really exist?’ they often ask me! Well, yes it does, and it’s not so complicated really, when you understand the others: ‘By the time we arrive, we’ll have been driving for two whole days!’ / ‘When you finish this article, you will have been reading English for 10 minutes – congratulations!’