ESL Grammar: Present Perfect Tense

Present Perfect Simple and Progressive

• The present perfect tense is used to describe an action that started in the past and has a connection to the present.
• The post office is near, and the speaker has been there many times before.
• You can go home now after writing emails for over three hours.
• The speaker has called someone at least four times, but they haven't answered.
• Bobby is dirty because he played outside the whole afternoon.
• The president has been preparing for his speech the whole morning.

Present Tense Simple and Continuous

• In Britain, women do not normally wear hats.
• The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
• Dad is making a terrible noise outside while mowing the lawn.
• The speaker spends weekends near the coast and goes there nearly every weekend.
• She smokes thirty cigarettes a day but is trying to stop.

Letter to Janet

• The doctor came yesterday and didn't like the speaker's cough.
• The speaker has been lying in bed since Tuesday and has never been ill like this before.
• The weather has been terrible, and it has been raining the whole week.
• The milkman didn't come this morning, but the speaker is sure they paid their bill.
• Alice got married last week, and Mary's kids have left home.
• Lucy Millmann is moving to Doncaster next month because she has been all alone since Fred died.
• The speaker has been neighbors with Lucy for over twenty years, and she has always been friendly and helpful.
• Jessica, the cleaning lady, left a few days ago, and the speaker didn't trust her since she broke plates and blamed the cat.
• The village hasn't changed very much, and a new family has taken over the grocery store recently.

Past Tense

• The speaker cycled in the rain along a country road in France with their best friend Tom last summer.
• They decided to go on a cycling holiday in northern France, neither of them having been to France before.
• They learned a little bit of French at school and managed to brush up on the basics.
• They wondered if they made the right decision after planning their route carefully for months.
• They forgot one important factor: the weather.