The Present Perfect tense refers to an action or state that either occurred at an indefinite time in the past (e.g., we have met before) or began in the past and continued to the present (e.g., he has learnt much over the last month).
We use the Present Perfect to ask about life experiences. We often use the adverb ‘ever’ to talk about experience up to the present:
This tense expresses actions of duration that occurred in the past (before now) but are of unspecified time:
To form the Present Perfect use:
[Subject] + has/have + Past Participle of verb
In negative forms, we add ‘not‘ or use ‘never‘:
I You We They | have haven’t (have not) | Past Participle |
He She It | has hasn’t (has not) |
Have | I you we they | (ever) | Past Participle |
Has | he she it |
With short answers, we use:
The Past Participles of regular verbs end in ‘ed’:
A lot of common verbs have irregular past participles:
go → been | buy → bought |
see → seen | drive → driven |
eat → eaten | have → had |
drink → drunk | write → written |
Compare:
We use the Present Perfect to talk about life experiences. However, we use the Past Simple when we talk about an action at a definite past time.
Check out this video and learn how to use Present Perfect to talk about past experiences:
See also:
Present Perfect or Past Simple?
Present Perfect: Negative & Questions
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