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The Russian present tense form is very simple. Verb forms like "I am working" , "I do work", "I have been working" do not exist in Russian. Instead, the form similar to that of English present simple tense is used.

The present tense is used to express:

1. Actions which are happening at the time of speaking 

   Она едет на работу 
   She is driving to work
   
    

2. Actions which occur regularly
   

   Земля вращается вокруг солнца
   The earth goes round the sun

    

3. Habitual actions

   Каждое утро я встаю в 8 часов
   I get up at 8 o'clock every morning

    

4. Actions which began in the past and are still happening or just stopped

   Я живу в Москве уже целый год
   I have been living in Moscow for a whole year

The endings of the present tense verbs (like "работаю" in the above example) change depending on person and number.

In order to find correct ending you need to perform the following steps.

I. Determine the conjugation of the verb. There are two conjugations:

The First Conjugation includes verbs that have the following letters before the infinitive ending in -ть:

    class I     а, я (читать, менять)
   class II    e (болеть)
   class III   ова (торговать)
   class IV   ну (махнуть)

The Second Conjugation includes verbs that have è before -ть

    class V    и (ходить, говорить)

II. Determine the stem of the verb. First, remove the last character from the verb form for I (я), for example я работаю --> я работа. Second, remove the last three characters from the verb form for familiar you (ты), for example ты работаешь --> ты работа. Then, compare two remainders. If they are the same, this is the stem you need. If they are different, use as the stem that remained from familiar you form.

III. Determine the ending to be added to the stem using this table.

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