G.8 - Present Perfect

We use the past participle when using perfect tenses, but unfortunately, many verbs are irregular in this form. e.g. Ride - Rode - Ridden

Here's an exercise to help you remember the perfect tenses and to help you see how many past participles you can remember.

Can you name any other verbs that are irregular in the past participle and put them in a perfect tense sentence? Good luck!

Present Perfect = have/has + past participle

This lesson will help you to revise using the present perfect tense for life experiences.

Read through the sentences and change the verb in brackets to the present perfect tense. Then award yourself ten points for each thing you have done. I have got 110/150! Chris what is your score? Let's see who has the highest score.

Good luck!

Lesson by Caroline Devane

We use the present perfect to talk about experiences we have had in our lifetime.

We use the present perfect when talking about an action happened at some point in the past. The date or time that it happened is not important. The focus is on the action, not when. The important thing is that it happened in the past and is now completed (finished).

For example:

I have visited South Africa.

How much do you remember about this subject?

For and since are commonly used with the present perfect tense.

For

We use for to talk about a period of time.

E.g. "I haven't smoked for weeks."

Since

We use since to talk about a specific point in time, or a time when the action started.

A while ago I wrote a lesson about the difference between the past simple and present perfect tenses.

Can you remember what you learned in that lesson? Test yourself with this more challenging exercise. Instead of giving you two options, it is your job to work out which tense is needed and then fill in the gaps yourself.

Good luck!
By Caroline Devane

What can you remember about how to use these tenses? Here are some top tips for using the present perfect and the past simple and then a test to check your understanding.

Today we take a look at the uses of Present Perfect Simple and Present Perfect Continuous.
Thanks to Amy Whiting from our Cape Town English School for this lesson.
 

Look at these two present perfect simple example sentences:

"The government has said they are going to introduce legislation."

"This is the first part of the report that we’ve agreed with."

Structure

The present perfect simple is have/ has + past participle.

Today we review forms of the irregular verb eat. 

Eat is the present simple.

Ate is the past simple.

Eaten is the past participle.

Very simple, isn't it? Now then, complete the sentences using the correct verb.

Which questions did you get wrong?

Link: Irregular Verbs