Grammar Zone | The Present Simple Tense

In this episode of The A to Z English Podcast, Xochitl and Jack teach you how to use the present simple tense correctly. Transcript: 00:00:52 Jack Like, what's your daily routine? 00:00:55 Xochitl Yeah, I I think it's. I think it's interesting because we because we, well, I'll tell my daily routine and we can break it out from there, but let's say. 00:01:06 Xochitl I wake up at 8:00 in the morning. I eat breakfast, I brush my teeth. 00:01:15 Xochitl And then I get ready for work. Jack, what do you do in the morning? 00:01:19 Jack I get up at 7:00 in the morning. I brush my teeth first. 00:01:27 Jack I've I've gotten into that practice recently. 00:01:30 Xochitl That's interesting. There's like the debate, and we'll have to make that a topic. 00:01:33 Xochitl Another time, but I mean I mean. 00:01:34 Jack Yeah. Yeah. Do you brush your teeth before you eat breakfast, or do you brush your teeth after you? 00:01:39 Jack First umm. So I brush my teeth, I wash my face. I I get dressed and then I go to work. I I teach at my university. I eat lunch. I teach a little bit more. I go home, I eat dinner. I watch Netflix with my wife and then I go to bed. 00:01:59 Jack And so that's my daily routine. Now, I think where students get confused about what we're talking about here is we're not talking about today. 00:02:09 Jack We're talking about. 00:02:11 Jack Everything. Yeah. Yeah. So things that we did in the past, things that we do now and things that we most likely will do in the future, like I don't see my routine changing anytime soon. 00:02:11 Xochitl Every day. 00:02:28 Jack And so, because it's a habitual thing. 00:02:33 Jack We we would put that in, we would use the present simple tense to to describe that. 00:02:39 Jack And I think it's the easiest. Like grammatically it's the easiest of the tenses because there's only really one rule that you have to remember. And that's when you use **, *** or it as the subject. What happens to the verb when you when you change it to like he or she. 00:02:59 Xochitl You add that S on the end because you're saying he brushes. She brushes they well. You you change it slightly for brushing teeth. You know, I brush my teeth versus ** *** brushes. 00:03:13 Xochitl They're here. I'm OK, Jack. I'm gonna let you take over because I'm getting. 00:03:17 Jack No, no, no. I know exactly what you're saying. So you like? Yeah. So if we use the subjects I, you, we, they you would say like I brush my teeth, we brush our teeth, it brushes its teeth. Although I don't know what that means. 00:03:34 Xochitl They brush their teeth. 00:03:34 Jack Or they brush their teeth. But if you use he or she so he brushes his teeth, he gets up, you add an S there he washes his face, he goes to work. Yeah. 00:03:46 Xochitl Stop. 00:03:50 Xochitl He watches Netflix, he eats dinner. 00:03:54 Xochitl She. 00:03:55 Xochitl Takes hour, so it just kind of changes a little bit. 00:03:59 Jack Yeah, we call that a inflection, A verb inflection where basically the verb changes a little bit and the inflection is just with an S or an ES. What about study? How would you change that to the present? Simple. 00:04:19 Xochitl UMI study every day or ** *** studies every day. So you change the Y to IES. 00:04:25 Jack Right. So. 00:04:28 Jack There you go. Yep, Y becomes IES. What about the verb have? 00:04:35 Jack I have breakfast. 00:04:37 Jack She or he, what would you use there? 00:04:37 Xochitl Uh. 00:04:39 Xochitl Has has she? He has breakfast. 00:04:43 Jack A common mistake that some you know beginners will make is that they'll UM. 00:04:47 Jack Over generalize the rule so they'll say haves like HAVES but we but that one's an irregular 1, so we have to use has and so they'll just be careful with the verb have when it's with using he or she we use has and. 00:04:51 Xochitl Yeah. 00:05:07 Jack That's that one. You just have to memorize. There's just a couple of of strange ones like that. 00:05:14 Jack Yeah. 00:05:15 Xochitl Yeah. All right,