Past, Present, and Future
Simple, Continuous, Perfect, and Perfect Continuous. So total = 3 × 4 = 12 tenses. SSC CGL tests your ability to spot errors and fill in the correct tense. This is one of the highest-scoring areas if you know the rules. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Subject + V1 (add -s/-es for He/She/It) Example: She writes a letter every day
always, usually, often, never, every day. RULE 2 — PRESENT CONTINUOUS Use for: actions happening RIGHT NOW
Subject + is/am/are + V1+ing Signal words: now, at this moment, currently, look, listen. RULE 3 — PRESENT PERFECT Use for: past action with a present result, or experience
Subject + has/have + V3 Signal words: just, already, yet, ever, never, recently, since, for. TRAP: Never use Present Perfect with definite past time (yesterday, last year, in 2010). Use Simple Past instead. RULE 4 — PRESENT PERFECT CONTINUOUS Use for: action that started in past and is STILL continuing
Subject + has/have + been + V1+ing Signal words: since (point of time), for (period of time). RULE 5 — SIMPLE PAST Use for: completed action at a definite time in the past
Subject + V2 Signal words: yesterday, last week, ago, in 1990, then. RULE 6 — PAST PERFECT Use for: the action that happened EARLIER among two past actions
Subject + had + V3 Trick: When two past events occur, the earlier one uses Past Perfect (had + V3), the later one uses Simple Past (V2). RULE 7 — FUTURE SIMPLE Use for: predictions, promises, instant decisions
Subject + will + V1 RULE 8 — FUTURE PERFECT Use for: action that will be completed before a future time
Subject + will have + V3 Signal words: by tomorrow, by next year, by the time. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ EXAM SHORTCUTS AND TRICKS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SHORTCUT 1 — SINCE vs FOR RULE Since = point of time (since 2010, since Monday) For = period of time (for 5 years, for two days) Both are used with Perfect tenses ONLY. If you see 'since' or 'for' with Simple Past in an option, it is WRONG. SHORTCUT 2 — THE GOLDEN SEQUENCE RULE If main clause = Past, then subordinate clause = Past
She said that she WAS happy. (NOT 'is') Exception: Universal truths always stay in Present tense
The teacher said that the Earth REVOLVES around the Sun. (NOT 'revolved') SHORTCUT 3 — STATIVE VERB TRICK Some verbs NEVER take the -ing form: know, want, love, hate, believe, understand, remember, need, seem, possess
I am knowing the answer
I know the answer. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Spot the signal word — 'since 2015' = point of time.
Since + point of time = Perfect Continuous tense.
Formula = has/have + been + V1+ing
Subject is 'She' (singular) → use 'has been working'. Answer: (C) has been working ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WORKED EXAMPLE 2 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Question (Error Spotting): He told me that he has completed the work yesterday.
'Yesterday' is a definite past time marker.
With definite past time, we CANNOT use Present Perfect (has completed).
We must use Simple Past instead.
Correct verb = 'had completed' (because main verb is 'told' = past, so subordinate clause needs past perfect for the earlier action). Correct Sentence: He told me that he had completed the work yesterday. Error was in: 'has completed' → should be 'had completed' ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #1 MOST COMMON TRAP — DO NOT FALL FOR THIS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Students use PRESENT PERFECT with 'yesterday', 'last year', or 'ago'. This is ALWAYS wrong. Present Perfect never goes with a definite past time word. The moment you see 'yesterday' or 'ago', the answer is Simple Past (V2) or Past Perfect (had + V3). This single mistake causes maximum errors in SSC CGL error spotting questions.
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