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The present simple is the easiest tense and the one that students typically learn first. Let’s have a look at how it is formed:
| Affirmative/positive | Negative | Interrogative/Question |
|---|---|---|
| I play | I don’t play | Do I play? |
| You play | You don’t play | Do you play? |
| He/she/it plays | He/she/it doesn’t play | Does he/she/it play? |
| We play | We don’t play | Do we play? |
| They play | They don’t play | Do they play? |
You’ll hopefully notice that we only change the form for the third personal singular, for he/she/it, and we do this by adding “s”.
Many verbs that end in “y” are changed to “ie”, followed by adding the “s” – for example: tries, cries etc.
If we are using a verb that ends in “o”, “s”, “z”, “ch”, “x” or “sh” we add “es” like so: goes, watches, does, buzzes etc.
We have to do the same with the question and negative forms as well, but this time we don’t add the “s” to the verb, but to the auxiliary “do” – so it becomes “does” and “doesn’t”.
