The English Verb Tense System Simple Simple Progressive Perfect Perfect Progressive Past :She helped her friend yesterday. She was helping her friend when I arrived She had helped her friend before I arrived. She had been helping her friend when the phone rang. Present: She helps her friend every day She is helping her friend now. She has helped her friend many times before. She has been helping her friend for two hours. Future :She will help her friend tomorrow She will be helping her friend when I get there. She will have helped her friend by tomorrow. She will have been helping her friend for a couple of hours by the time they stop The grid is easier to follow www.freeenglishnow.com/lse6.html

Simple Present Tense, Present Continuous Tense, Simple Past Tense, Past Continuous Tense, Present Perfect Tense, Future Tense and sometimes you have to use Present Perfect Continuous and Past Perfect

As a linguist, I understand your concern and disposition in wanting to learn the most "important verbs." My best recommendation to you would be that instead of trying to master the most important verbs in everyday use of English, you focus instead on two very important ideas that pose major difficulties for foreign speakers: 1. Subject auxiliary inversion in questions: i.e. "What time IS IT?" vs. "*What time IT IS?" 2. the verb TO DO i. one use of said verb is synonymous for the verb TO MAKE ii. the other use of the verb is in questions and has no semantic value (it does not mean anything) but is nonetheless EXTREMELY important in forming grammatically correct questions. Both of these concepts are present in every aspect of day-to-day English in all of its capacities (regardless of he country where English is spoken). If you have further question please feel free to shoot me a message. I hope this information was useful.

Have you read the subject, well? I mean, it doesn't seem I want use "only important verb tenses".. Actually, I think it's only your opinion. I love this language and I don't search any shortcut to improve my language skill. It was only curiosity.. that's all! Thanks for your reply.. ;)

If you're planning to use only the "important verb tenses", then you'll sound like a very poor speaker indeed! ;) Just dive in and take the challenge.