There are twelve tenses in English grammar, four to describe events in the present, four to describe events in the past, and four to describe events in the future. They are: The present tenses: The Present Simple (I go) The Present Continuous (I am going) The Present Perfect (I have gone) The Present Perfect Continuous (I have been going) The past tenses: The Past Simple (I went) The Past Continuous (I was going) The Past Perfect (I had gone) The Past Perfect Continuous (I had been going) The Future tenses: The Future Simple (I will go) The Future Continuous (I will be going) The Future Perfect (I will have gone) The Future Perfect Continuous (I will have been going) However, you don’t need to master all of these right away. The Future Perfect Continuous is very rare indeed! The four most common tenses are the Past Simple tense, the Present Simple tense, the Future Simple tense, and the Perfect Present tense.