Grammar Lessons
Clear rules, real examples, and quick drills for the grammar structures that matter most for a higher IELTS band score.
Using the right tense signals when something happens and is one of the fastest ways to raise your IELTS Grammatical Range and Accuracy score.
- 1Use the present simple for facts, habits, and routines (e.g. 'The government spends billions on education every year').
- 2Use the present perfect to connect the past to the present, especially for trends up to now ('Prices have risen steadily over the last decade').
- 3Use the past simple for a finished action at a specific past time ('The graph showed a sharp increase in 1995').
- 4Use the future with 'will' for predictions and the first conditional; use 'going to' for plans already decided.
- 5Mixing tenses within one sentence without a clear reason is a common band-lowering error in Writing Task 1 and Task 2.
Examples
Renewable energy use has increased significantly since 2010.
Renewable energy use increased significantly since 2010.
Because the time reference ('since 2010') connects the past to now, the present perfect is required, not the past simple.
If governments invest more in public transport, congestion will decrease.
If governments will invest more in public transport, congestion will decrease.
In a first conditional, the 'if' clause uses the present simple, not 'will', even though the meaning is future.