The Present Perfect Tense

The present perfect tense is a style of writing that refers to ‘action’ or ‘state’ that happened in an undefined time in the past;

‘we have spoken before’.

This ‘action’ or ‘state’ may also have begun in the past but has continued into the present; ‘she has grown unsettled over the past week’. The Present perfect tense is formed of have/has, plus the past participle.

A past participle indicates past or completed action or time. It is often called the ‘ed’ form as it is formed by adding d or ed, to the base form of regular verbs; however it is also formed in various other ways for irregular verbs. The construction of this verb tense is actually reasonably straightforward:

The first element is ‘have’ or ‘has’; although this would depend on the subject, the verb is conjugated with. (Conjugated verbs are verbs which have been changed to communicate one or more of the following: person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, or voice.)

The second element is the past participle of the verb, this is usually formed by adding -ed or -d to the verb’s root. An example of this might be;

walk, which becomes walked.

The English language, however, does have quite a few irregular verbs, and these would have irregular past participles: done, said, gone, known, won, thought, felt, eaten.

Sentence structure in the Present Perfect Tense:

Subject (I/You/We/They) – (v3) – Past Particle (Have met or Has lived) – Rest of the sentence (him before or here for three years)

(V3) Past particle

Walk – Walked, Study – Studied, Stop – Stopped, Create – Created

Time expressions in the present perfect tense:-

• Use ‘since’ with a specific year or period of time in the past: ‘since 2002’ or ‘since I was a child.’
• Use ‘for’ with a number of years; ‘for twenty years’
• Use ‘ever’ and ‘yet’ in questions and negatives; ‘have you ever’ or ‘hasn’t been yet.’
• Use ‘already’ and ‘never’ just between have/has and their verb; ‘has already finished’ and ‘have just been.’
• Use ‘before’, ‘since’, ‘for’, ‘already’, ‘many times’, ‘so far’, ‘yet’, at the end of a sentence or question; ‘Have you been there before?’
• Describe actions from the past, but are still relevant to the present:
• “Daniel has broken her arm” – She broke it in the past and can’t use her arm now.
• Describe the action that started in the past, but is still happening on a regular or habitual basis (like the present simple):
• “The girls have played tennis at the club since 2005” – They started to play tennis there in 2005 and still play there today. This does not mean they are playing tennis at the moment
• Describe actions that were repeated several times in the past:
• “I’ve already made several calls.” (Up till now) The specific time in the past is unimportant.

Never use the same time expressions that you use in the past simple tense;

• Yesterday
• A week ago
• Last night
• You may use unspecified time expressions;
• Ever
• Never
• Since
• For
• Already
• Many times
• Before
• So far
• Yet