Tenses and Verb Forms for ICSE

Why Tenses Cost More Than 4 Marks

Most students think tenses are only worth 4 marks on the ICSE paper. They are wrong.

Yes, Question 5(i) gives you a cloze passage with 8 blanks. That's 4 marks for filling in the correct verb form. But tenses also decide whether you lose marks in your composition (Q1, 20 marks), your letter (Q2, 10 marks), your notice or email (Q3, 10 marks), and even your comprehension answers (Q4, 20 marks). Add it all up, and tense accuracy is quietly responsible for 10 to 14 marks on your paper.

3 Step Tense Finder CheatsheetDownload PDF(opens in new tab)

So why do students keep losing these marks?

The CISCE examiner report tells us exactly why. Students wrote "thinked" instead of "thought." They used "went" when they should have used "had gone." They picked simple past every single time, even when the sentence clearly needed past perfect. The pattern is always the same: students know what each tense is, but they cannot figure out which tense to use when two actions sit in the same sentence.

That's because most grammar books teach tenses as a table. Twelve boxes. Memorise the formula. Done. But the ICSE board does not test you on tables. It tests whether you can read a sentence, look at the actions in it, and logically work out which tense fits.

The examiner report says it directly: "Teach verb forms and tenses in detail and ensure students work out the verb form required logically themselves."

Below, a decision tree walks you through picking the right tense, followed by the mistakes the examiner report flags every year.

The Tense Decision Tree: How to Pick the Right Tense Every Time

Instead of memorising all twelve forms, ask three questions for each blank. These three questions narrow you down to the correct tense.

Step 1: When does the action happen?

Read the sentence and the sentences around it. Is this action happening in the past, present, or future? This one question eliminates 8 out of 12 tenses immediately.

• Past → You're now choosing between Simple Past, Past Continuous, Past Perfect, or Past Perfect Continuous
• Present → You're choosing between Simple Present, Present Continuous, Present Perfect, or Present Perfect Continuous
• Future → You're choosing between Simple Future, Future Continuous, Future Perfect, or Future Perfect Continuous

Step 2: What is the nature of the action?

Now ask: is this action finished? Is it ongoing? Or is it connected to another point in time?

• The action is finished or it's a fact → Simple (He walked. She writes. They will go.)
• The action is ongoing, in progress right at that moment → Continuous (He was walking. She is writing. They will be going.)
• The action is finished but connected to another time. It was completed before something else → Perfect (He had walked. She has written. They will have gone.)
• The action was ongoing for a duration leading up to a point in time → Perfect Continuous (He had been walking. She has been writing. They will have been going.)

Step 3: The Past Tense Trap (where ICSE marks are won or lost)

If the passage is in the past tense (and most ICSE cloze passages are), you need to ask one more question. This is where students lose marks every single year.

• Is there only ONE completed past action? → Simple Past ("He went to the market.")
• Are there TWO past actions, and one happened BEFORE the other? → The earlier action takes Past Perfect ("He had gone to the market"), the later action takes Simple Past ("he cooked dinner").
• Was one action IN PROGRESS when another action interrupted it? → The ongoing action takes Past Continuous ("He was walking"), and the interruption takes Simple Past ("when it started raining").

The Decision Tree in Action: Worked Examples

Sentence: "Riya ______ (finish) her homework before her mother came home."

Step 1: When? The passage is in the past. Both actions are in the past.
Step 2: Nature? The finishing happened and it was done before something else. That "before" is your signal.
Step 3: Two past actions. Which happened first? The finishing happened first, the mother coming home happened second. The earlier action takes past perfect.
Answer: had finished

Sentence: "The children ______ (play) in the garden when the storm began."

Both actions are past. The playing was ongoing when the storm interrupted it, so the ongoing action takes past continuous.
Answer: were playing

Sentence: "She ______ (buy) a new phone last week."

Past, completed, no second action. Simple past. But "buy" is irregular: the past form is "bought," not "buyed."
Answer: bought

Sentence: "By the time you arrive, the train ______ (leave)."

Step 1: When? Future. "By the time you arrive" points to a future moment.
Step 2: Nature? The leaving will be completed before the arriving. That "by the time" is the signal. An action completed before a future point = future perfect.
Answer: will have left

The 12 Tenses, Explained Simply

Here is a reference for each of the 12 tenses. Pay attention to the signal words; those are the clues the board places in cloze passages.

Present Tenses

Simple Present

Habits, routines, facts, and things that are generally true all take simple present.

Formula: Subject + base verb (add -s/-es for he/she/it)

"She drinks tea every morning."
"The sun rises in the east."

Signal words: every day, always, usually, often, sometimes, never, generally

Present Continuous

If the action is happening right now, at this very moment, it takes present continuous. It also covers temporary situations.

Formula: Subject + is/am/are + verb-ing

"She is reading a book right now."
"They are playing football in the park."

Signal words: now, right now, at the moment, currently, look!, listen!

Present Perfect

Something happened in the past, but its effect matters now. That connection to the present is what separates present perfect from simple past. It also applies when the exact time does not matter.

Formula: Subject + has/have + past participle

"She has eaten lunch already."
"I have known him for ten years."

Signal words: already, just, yet, ever, never, since, for, so far, recently

Present Perfect Continuous

When an action started in the past, is still going on, and you want to emphasise how long it has been continuing, use present perfect continuous.

Formula: Subject + has/have + been + verb-ing

"She has been studying since 6 a.m."
"They have been waiting for two hours."

Signal words: since, for, all day, all morning, how long

Past Tenses

Simple Past

The action happened at a specific time in the past and is completely finished. One action, done.

Formula: Subject + past form of verb (walked, wrote, bought)

"He went to the market yesterday."
"She wrote a letter last night."

Signal words: yesterday, last week, last year, ago, in 2020, that day, then

Past Continuous

Think of this as the "background action" tense. Something was in progress when something else came along and interrupted it. The examiner report flags this one regularly because students default to simple past even when the action was clearly ongoing.

Formula: Subject + was/were + verb-ing

"She was walking to school when it started raining."
"They were watching TV at 8 o'clock last night."

Signal words: while, when, as, at that time, all evening

Past Perfect

This is the tense ICSE students struggle with the most. If two things happened in the past, the one that happened first takes past perfect. The later action stays in simple past. Most marks lost in the cloze passage come from mixing these two up.

Formula: Subject + had + past participle

"She had finished her homework before her mother came."
"The train had left by the time we reached the station."

Signal words: before, after, by the time, already, until, when (with two past actions)

Past Perfect Continuous

Like past perfect, but the earlier action was ongoing, not just completed. It had been continuing for some duration before the second past action happened.

Formula: Subject + had + been + verb-ing

"She had been waiting for an hour before the bus arrived."
"They had been living in Delhi for five years before they moved to Mumbai."

Signal words: for, since, before, all day (when followed by another past event)

Future Tenses

Simple Future

Any action that will happen later: a plan, a promise, a prediction, or a decision.

Formula: Subject + will/shall + base verb

"She will go to the library tomorrow."
"I shall return the book next week."

Signal words: tomorrow, next week, next year, soon, later, in the future

Future Continuous

If someone asks "What will you be doing at 5 p.m. tomorrow?" the answer takes future continuous, because the action will be in progress at that specific future moment.

Formula: Subject + will be + verb-ing

"She will be travelling to Kolkata this time tomorrow."
"They will be taking their exam at 10 a.m."

Signal words: this time tomorrow, at 5 p.m. tomorrow, all day tomorrow

Future Perfect

The future version of past perfect. An action will be completed before a specific future deadline or before another future event.

Formula: Subject + will have + past participle

"She will have finished the project by Friday."
"The patient will have recovered before you arrive."

Signal words: by, by the time, before, by next month, by then

Future Perfect Continuous

This one is rare in ICSE papers, but you should know it. It shows the duration of an ongoing action up to a future point.

Formula: Subject + will have been + verb-ing

"By next March, she will have been teaching at this school for 20 years."
"By 6 p.m., they will have been playing for three hours."

Signal words: by, for, since (with a future reference point)

All 12 Tenses ChartDownload PDF(opens in new tab)

The 3 Mistakes ICSE Students Make Every Year

The CISCE examiner report tells teachers exactly where students went wrong. These are the three errors that come up every year.

Mistake 1: Using Simple Past When Past Perfect Is Needed

This is the most common error. The examiner report says students consistently choose simple past instead of past perfect when two past events are sequenced. Students wrote "went" instead of "had gone" and "prepared" instead of "had prepared."

Here's the rule. If two things happened in the past, the one that happened earlier takes past perfect (had + past participle). The later one stays in simple past. It doesn't matter which one comes first in the sentence. What matters is which action happened first in real time.

✗ After he went to the market, he cooked dinner.
✓ After he had gone to the market, he cooked dinner.
Going to the market happened first. So it takes "had gone." Cooking dinner happened second. So it stays in simple past.

✗ The train left before we reached the station.
✓ The train had left before we reached the station.
The train leaving happened before the reaching. Earlier action = past perfect.

✗ She already finished her food when I arrived.
✓ She had already finished her food when I arrived.
"Already" is a strong signal for past perfect. She finished first, then you arrived.

✗ By the time the doctor came, the patient died.
✓ By the time the doctor came, the patient had died.
"By the time" is another classic past perfect signal. The dying happened before the doctor's arrival.

Watch for these signal words: before, after, by the time, already, until, as soon as. When you see them with two past actions, ask yourself which action happened first. That action takes past perfect. Many of these signal words are subordinating conjunctions. These signal words also appear in reported speech conversions, where tense shifts follow similar patterns.

Mistake 2: Using Regular Verb Forms for Irregular Verbs

The examiner report specifically flagged students who wrote "thinked" instead of "thought." This isn't a tense problem. It's a verb form problem. And it costs marks in both the cloze passage and your writing sections.

Regular verbs just add -ed in the past tense: walk → walked, play → played. But irregular verbs change their form completely, and there's no pattern to memorise for all of them. You just have to know them.

✗ She thinked about it all night.
✓ She thought about it all night.

✗ He catched the ball with one hand.
✓ He caught the ball with one hand.

✗ They buyed new uniforms for the team.
✓ They bought new uniforms for the team.

✗ The teacher teached us a new poem.
✓ The teacher taught us a new poem.

Here are 20 irregular verbs that ICSE students get wrong most often:

The full list with pattern groupings is in the Irregular Verbs Reference section below. For more grammar topics, see our complete grammar guide.

Mistake 3: Confusing Past Continuous with Simple Past

Students write "I walked to school when it started raining." That's wrong. If you were in the middle of walking (it was an ongoing action) and then the rain interrupted it, the walking has to be in past continuous.

Think of it this way. Simple past is a finished point: you walked, done. Past continuous is a background film that was rolling: you were walking, and then something happened while the film was playing.

✗ I walked to school when it started raining.
✓ I was walking to school when it started raining.
Walking was in progress (background action). Raining started and interrupted it (point action).

✗ She cooked dinner when the doorbell rang.
✓ She was cooking dinner when the doorbell rang.
Cooking was the ongoing background action. The doorbell was the interruption.

✗ The students wrote in their notebooks while the teacher explained.
✓ The students were writing in their notebooks while the teacher was explaining.
"While" with two simultaneous ongoing actions, so both take past continuous.

✗ He read a book when the lights went out.
✓ He was reading a book when the lights went out.
Reading was in progress. Lights going out interrupted it.

The key signal words here are "when" and "while." When you see "when" in a past tense sentence with two actions, check: was one action ongoing while the other interrupted it? If yes, the ongoing one takes past continuous.

How to Solve ICSE Cloze Passage Questions: Step by Step

In the exam, Question 5(i) gives you a short narrative passage with 8 blanks. Each blank has a base verb in brackets. You need to write the correct form. Here is a reliable strategy for these questions.

The Five Step Strategy

1. Read the entire passage first. Don't jump to the first blank. Read the whole thing. Get the story. Understand what's happening.
2. Identify the base tense of the passage. Most ICSE narrative passages are written in simple past. Check the verbs that are already filled in. They tell you what tense the passage lives in.
3. For each blank, ask the three decision tree questions: When does it happen? Is it finished, ongoing, or before something else? If past tense, is it a single action, an earlier action, or an interrupted action?
4. Check for signal words around the blank. Words like "before," "after," "already," "while," "when," "by the time," "since," and "for" are the board's way of telling you which tense to use. Don't ignore them.
5. Write the verb form and verify the spelling. If it's an irregular verb, make sure you're using the correct past form, not adding -ed to everything.

Worked Cloze Passage: Full Walkthrough

Arun woke up late that morning. He (1) ______ (realise) that he (2) ______ (forget) to set his alarm the night before. He quickly (3) ______ (get) dressed and rushed out of the house. While he (4) ______ (run) towards the bus stop, he (5) ______ (slip) on the wet road and fell. A kind shopkeeper who (6) ______ (watch) from his shop came out to help. By the time Arun finally (7) ______ (reach) school, the first period (8) ______ (begin) already.

Blank 1: realise

The passage is in simple past ("woke up," "rushed"). This is a completed past action. He realised something. One action, done. Simple past.
Answer: realised

Blank 2: forget

He realised (past) that he forgot (earlier action). The forgetting happened the night before, so that's earlier than the realising. Two past actions, the earlier one takes past perfect. Also, "forget" is irregular: forget → forgot → forgotten.
Answer: had forgotten

Blank 3: get

"He quickly got dressed." A completed past action in the sequence. One action, done. Simple past. "Get" is irregular: get → got → got.
Answer: got

Blank 4: run

"While he was running." The "while" tells you this action was ongoing. It was in progress when the slipping happened. Ongoing background action in the past = past continuous.
Answer: was running

Blank 5: slip

He slipped. This is the interrupting action. It cut into the running. A sudden completed action in the past. Simple past.
Answer: slipped

Blank 6: watch

"A shopkeeper who was watching." This is a relative clause describing what the shopkeeper was doing at that moment. He was in the process of watching when the fall happened. Past continuous.
Answer: was watching

Blank 7: reach

"By the time Arun reached school." This is the later of two past actions. The reaching happened second. It stays in simple past. (The earlier action, the first period beginning, will take past perfect.)
Answer: reached

Blank 8: begin

"The first period had begun already." Look at "by the time" and "already." The first period starting happened before Arun's arrival. Earlier of two past actions = past perfect. "Begin" is irregular: begin → began → begun.
Answer: had begun

Notice the pattern in that passage? Out of 8 blanks, you had 4 simple past, 2 past continuous, and 2 past perfect. That's a typical ICSE mix. The board almost always tests your ability to switch between these three past tenses within a single story. Get comfortable with this switching, and the 4 marks are yours.

Irregular Verbs Reference

These are the irregular verbs that show up most often in ICSE papers and that Indian students commonly get wrong. They're grouped by pattern so you can learn them in batches instead of memorising a random list.

Pattern 1: All three forms are different (A, B, C)

Pattern 2: The i, a, u pattern (begin, began, begun)

Pattern 3: Past simple and past participle are the same (A, B, B)

Tricky Pair: lie vs. lay

This one confuses even adults. Here's the difference:

The confusing part: the past tense of "lie" (recline) is "lay," which is the same word as the present tense of "lay" (place). Just remember: "Yesterday, I lay down" (past of lie). "Please lay the book on the table" (present of lay).

Irregular Verbs & Common Tense MistakesDownload PDF(opens in new tab)

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