English Grammar

Conditional sentences express what happens — or would happen — under certain circumstances. English has several types, from factual zero conditionals to hypothetical third conditionals.

English has four present forms — each one captures something different about how an action unfolds right now, habitually, or with a connection to the past.

English past tenses do different jobs — past simple narrates completed events, past continuous sets the scene, and past perfect reaches back before another past moment.

English has no single future tense — instead it uses several forms depending on whether you're expressing a prediction, a plan, a decision, or a scheduled event.

Modal verbs express what is possible, necessary, certain, or permitted. English uses can, could, should, must, might, may and their combinations to cover a huge range of meaning — from simple ability to past regret.

Reported speech — also called indirect speech — is how we describe what someone said without quoting them directly. It involves tense backshift, pronoun changes, and time expression changes.

The passive voice shifts focus from who does the action to what receives it. It appears across all tenses and is common in news, formal writing, and everyday speech — especially with "get".

Structures that express regret, desire, or unreal situations by using past verb forms for present meaning. Native speakers use these constantly for everything from mild complaints ("I wish you'd listen") to deep regrets ("I wish I had studied harder") to polite preferences ("I'd rather you didn't").

How native speakers talk about things that were true or happened repeatedly in the past. "Used to" is the workhorse, but "would" for recurring past events and the "be/get used to" constructions for accustomed states are equally important — and frequently confused.