Grammar: Present simple

Welcome to Manchester! What do you know about the city?

    Manchester is nearly 2000 years old, so has a very long and complex history. It is probably best-known for its music and its two world-famous football teams. Manchester United play at Old Trafford and most students want to visit the stadium when they are here. Manchester City's home is the Etihad Stadium which is in east Manchester. Old Trafford is the larger stadium, and holds 10,000 more spectators.
    There are many music venues in the city. The area behind Piccadilly Gardens is The Northern Quarter and there are lots of places where you can listen to local bands.
    A very popular area in Manchester is Rusholme, where there are many Arabic and Indian restaurants. People go there with their friends and eat different kinds of food. Many buses go to Rusholme. During Eid celebrations, the area gets extremely busy: buses use different routes and lots of people walk along the streets and make a lot of noise.
    Most students think that the people in Manchester are friendly, so you don't need to worry about asking people questions. A lot of people think that it rains all the time in Manchester, but it really doesn't rain every day. I hope that you have a great time while you are here!


Look at the verbs in the text. What tense are the verbs?


We use the present simple to talk about facts and things that are generally true. We also use the present simple to talk about routines and habits, things that we do every day eg I go to bed at 10pm, Peter has lunch at Subway.

There are some things you need to be careful with:

• we use the base form of the verb to make the present simple eg read, write, go, do, have, start
• we use the base form + s/es when we use he/she/it (the third person simple)
• we use has not have when we use he/she/it
• be is an irregular verb, so we say I am, you are, he/she/it is, we are, they are
• we use do + subject + base form to make questions, and don't + base form to make negatives eg "Do the students study hard in class, Ryan?" "No, they don't study very hard."
• but, for he/she/it, we use does + subject + base form to make questions, and doesn't + base form to make negatives eg "Does Peter study hard in class?" "No, he doesn't study very hard."
• remember that the negative of have is don't have. The negative of has is doesn't have.

Click on the pictures below to make the slides bigger:

Here are the verbs Be, Do, and Have. You need to learn these because we use them to make different tenses:

Remember that the third person singular (he, she, it) can be spelt with s or es. Sometimes we also use ies. This picture tells you how you spell different verbs:

Do you want more practise? Click on the links below:

https://elt.oup.com/student/englishfile/preint/a_grammar/file01/grammar01_b01?cc=gb&selLanguage=en

https://elt.oup.com/student/englishfile/preint/a_grammar/file01/grammar01_b02?cc=gb&selLanguage=en

There is a short dialogue you can listen to here, and then there are some practice exercises: https://elt.oup.com/student/livinggrammar/ele/b_practice/a_present/?cc=gb&selLanguage=en