What does a verbs tense tell you?

Verb tenses tell us how an action relates to the flow of time. There are three main verb tenses in English: present, past and future. The present, past and future tenses are divided into four aspects: the simple, progressive, perfect and perfect progressive. These are called helping, or auxiliary verbs. The tense of a verb can also tell us things like whether the action is habitual, ongoing, or completed. This is called the aspect of the verb, which is part of tense.