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I am preparing for my TEFL course starting on Monday and I have been asked the following question.

"Conventional student texts use combinations of the above to label verb tenses (Futurity, aspect, conditional, voice, modals, phrasals). How many "tenses" are there if we look at them this way, and what are they?"

Any ideas?

Many thanks, C

They are called "verb paradigms" counting active and passive voice seperately as well, but not counting conditionals, there are (if I remember right) 53.

I've got them on my computer somewhere, I'll try and dig them out.

How many "tenses" are there if we look at them this way, and what are they?"

a) too many b) confusing

What TEFL course is this? Sounds a pretty crappy question to be asking.

According to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, after time travel was invented, it resulted in another fifty or so tenses being required.

A=active, P=passive
Verb Paradigm
Imperative Simple - 1. Stand up!
Imperative Continuous - 2. Be upstanding in court!
Present Simple 3. (A) People make cars. 4. (P) Cars are made.
Present Continuous - 5. (A) People are making cars. 6. (P) Cars are being made.
Present Perfect Simple - 7. (A) People have made cars. 8. (P) Cars have been made.
Present Perfect Continuous - 9. (A) People have been making cars. [(P) Does not exist.]
Past Simple - 10. (A) People made cars. 11. (P) Cars were made.
Past Continuous - 12. (A) People were making cars. 13 (P) Cars were being made.
Past Perfect Simple - 14. (A) People had made cars. 15. (P) Cars had been made.
Past Perfect Continuous - 16. (A) People had been making cars. [(P) Does not exist.]
Future Simple (modal) 17. (A) People will make cars. 18. (P) Cars will be made.
Future Continuous (modal) 19. (A) People will be making cars. 20. (P) Cars will be being made.
Future Perfect Simple (Modal) 21. People will have made cars. 22. (P) Cars will have been made.
Future Perfect Continuous (modal) 23. People will have been making cars. [(P) Does not exist.]
Future Simple (Going to) 24. (A) People are going to make cars. 25. (P) Cars are going to be made.
Future Continuous (Going to) 26. People are going to be making cars. 27. (P) Cars are going to be being made.
Future Perfect Simple (Going to) 28. People are going to have made cars. 29. (P) Cars are going to have been made.
Future Perfect Continuous 30 (A) People are going to have been making cars. [(P) Does not exist.]
Future in the Past Simple (Going to) 31. (A) People were going to make cars. 32 (P) Cars were going to be made.
Future in the Past continuous (Going to) 33. People were going to be making cars. 34. Cars were going to be being made.
Future in the past perfect 35. (A) People were going to have made cars. 36. (P) Cars were going to have been made.
Future in the past perfect continuous 37. People were going to have been making cars. [(P) Does not exist.]
Future simple (Be to) 38. (A) People are to make cars. 39. (P) Cars are to be made.
Future in the past (Be to) 40. (A) People were to make cars. 41. (P) Cars were to be made.
Future continuous (Be to) 42. (A) People are to be making cars. 43. (P) Cars are to be being made.
Future continuous in the past (Be to) 44. (A) People were to be making cars. 45. (P) Cars were to be being made.
Discontinued Past simple (used to) 46. People used to make cars. 47. Cars used to be made.
Discontinued Past simple (used to) 48. People used to be making cars. 49. Cars used to be being made.
Discontinued Past simple (would) 50. People would make cars. 51. Cars would be made.
Discontinued Past continuous (would) 52. People would be making cars. 53. Cars would be being made.

In reply to Stephen Jones a) Not too many b) Yes, confusing - I do not recommend giving this list to students.

Most of those passives exist though. eg: Cars have/had/will have/are (were) going to have been (being) made.


I'll grant that contexts would never have been going to be being easily found but that 's not to say that they wouldn't have been being eventually found if they had been being assiduously sought by someone who had been being challenged sufficiently by the possibility of their having been found.

Should I include?
Present subjunctive (54) I demand that something be done about my car!
Fossilised Present subjunctive (55) God save the car!
Past subjunctive (56) I would rather you didn't make cars.

Then this gets fuzzy, if we can have "will" and "would" as seperate paradigms, then are all the modals seperate paradigms? If "used to" is a seperate paradigm, then perhaps we should say that all the catenatives can be classed as forming seperate paradigms - "be about to", "be on the brink of", "be on the point of" and "be on the verge of" are all ways of referring to the future, for instance. Perhaps it should be limited to modal equivelents.