Present simple

Welcome! I'm excited to help you master the today.

Before we dive in, how comfortable do you currently feel using the Present Simple, and is there anything specific you want to focus on today?

I'm a beginner and want to start from the absolute basics.

Starting from the absolute basics is the perfect way to build a rock-solid foundation! Since we have our path ready, let's take a look at the road ahead.

Your path

Forming Affirmative Statements

Forming Negative Sentences

Forming Questions and Answers

Let's dive right into our first step: why we actually use this tense. Think of the Present Simple as your "lifestyle and reality" lens. We don't use it to describe what is happening right this very second; instead, we use it for things that are generally true, permanent, or happen regularly. We can break these down into three big buckets:

Habits and Routines: Things you do repeatedly. For example, "I drink coffee every morning" or "They watch TV every night."
General Truths and Facts: Constants in the world that don't change. For example, " at zero degrees" or "The sun rises in the east."
Permanent States: Things we view as stable and unchanging. For example, "She lives in London" or "I work as a teacher."

To make these habits and routines even clearer, we often pair them with "time expressions" that tell us how often they happen, like always, usually, every day, or never. Which of those three buckets does your own daily routine fall into when you describe what you do every day?

Can we make a diagram of these three buckets?

I would love to! Visualizing these categories makes them so much easier to remember and recognize when you are reading or speaking.

Uses of the Present Simple TenseDiagram

I've kicked off a diagram to help you see how these three buckets organize our daily thoughts and absolute truths! While that's being put together, we can look at the second bullet point in this step: time expressions. Because habits and routines happen repeatedly, we naturally pair them with and time phrases to show how often they occur. Here are some of the most common ones you'll use:

Always (100% of the time): "I always brush my teeth."
Usually (about 80-90%): "We usually eat dinner at home."
Often (about 50-70%): "He often reads books."
Sometimes (about 20-40%): "They sometimes go to the park."
Never (0%): "She never eats meat."
Every day / week / year: "I study English every day."

Notice how words like always, usually, and never sit right before the action verb, while phrases like every day usually go at the very end of your sentence.

Give me a quick translation exercise with these

You got it! Translating is an amazing way to train your brain to stop translating word-for-word and start feeling the natural rhythm of English.

Let's do three quick translations together, focusing on how we use those like always and never. Since we are using the base verb form for "I" and "they" at this stage, we won't worry about adding "-s" to the verbs just yet.

How would you translate this first sentence into English?

"Yo siempre bebo café por la mañana." (Hint: 'to drink' is 'drink', and 'coffee' is 'coffee'.)