Present Perfect Tense vs Past Perfect Tense Learn English Grammar

want to speak real english from your

first lesson

at englishclass101.com

hi everybody my name is alicia in this

lesson i’m going to talk about some

differences between the present

perfect and the past perfect these are

two commonly confused grammar points

so in this lesson i’m going to compare

the uses of these two

tenses and i’m going to give some

example sentences

that i hope show the different ways that

they are applied

so let’s get started i want to begin

this lesson by talking about present

perfect tense i made a diagram here

this diagram shows the two

primarily two uses i want to talk about

in this lesson

of present perfect first though let’s

read

the explanation here we use the present

perfect

tense to express actions that started

in the past and continue to the present

so present means now or the effects

of the action continue to the present

so this explanation

shown visually might look something like

this

these two lines that continue from the

past

to the present so here is a timeline

this star represents now this direction

is the future

back here is the past so we use present

perfect tense to describe

actions that start if this is my

starting point

that start in the past and continue

to the present we can also use it to

describe actions

that start in the past and the effects

of that action continue to the present

this is the first point we can also use

this grammar point with the progressive

form or the continuous form of a verb

remember this is the ing the ing

form of a verb for emphasis on the

continuing action

so if you really want to show that

something has been continuing

and will continue perhaps after your

conversation

so this helps show the action will

continue into the future

you can use that in form of a verb

we also use the present perfect tense

for

life experience at an unspecified

point in the past so unspecified means

it’s

not clear when the action happened

or it’s not important when the action

happened

we just want to express life experience

on a timeline this might look something

like this

the dotted lines represent some sometime

in the past we don’t know exactly when

but there was life experience something

happened we use this for like travel

job experience and so on we can also

make a negative

here to show no life experience in the

past at some point or at any point

in the past so with these points in mind

let’s look at some example sentences

that show us

how present perfect tense is used

first example sentence i have

been to france i have been to france

this is a very basic present perfect

tense sentence

this is actually a simple life

experience

statement so i mentioned we use the

present perfect

tense for life experience i have been to

france

shows us that at some point in the past

the speaker had the experience of

visiting france

so as i said this is a very basic

sentence that uses present perfect

to refresh when we make present perfect

sentences

we use have or has depending on the

subject like

i have or she has he has

plus the past participle verb form

here we’re using i as our subject

have my verb is be so the past

participle form is

bin i have been in this case to france

so this refers to a simple life

experience

let’s take a look at another example

she has been studying english

for three years she has been studying

english for three years

here we see a verb is used in the

progressive form

so this shows it’s an action that is

continuing

in this case we have some more

information

so this action has continued for three

years

this means at the point in time

at which this conversation happened here

she in the situation this other person

she has been studying continuously

for three years so let’s imagine this

point in time in the past

is her start point her study start point

she has been studying for three years so

this time period is three years

that’s what this sentence tells us she

has been

studying here you’ll also notice

that this pattern follows this pattern i

mentioned earlier

has been and then the continuing action

or the progressive verb here follows

this past participle verb form so this

shows us the continuing action

we can use for or we can use since

in patterns like these okay

let’s move on to another one here

he has been sick for a week

so here we’re talking about a condition

so we can’t use sick as a verb we can’t

say sicking that doesn’t work

he has been sick so sick is describing a

person’s condition

the status of their body it’s not

talking about an

action he’s not doing something it’s his

condition

we want to express that this condition

started in the past in this case for a

week

so this point in the past is a week ago

he has been sick so

maybe we could say like he was very sick

here and then he got a little bit better

but we wouldn’t really be so specific in

everyday conversation about that

we would probably use something like

this he has been sick

for a week so this shows us maybe there

were some effects of his sickness

perhaps that continued

we can guess based on our own

experiences

what this means so he has been sick

for a week shows us someone began

the sick condition here and it continued

for this period of time it may continue

but we just talk about this point in

time here

and because it’s not an action just

using this simple phrase

is perfectly natural okay

let’s move on to one more example

sentence that uses

present perfect this one it’s a negative

i’ve never written a book i’ve never

written a book this ive is i have

i have i’ll come back to this in a

moment

i mentioned that we use the present

perfect tense to talk about

life experience and no life experience

this is a situation that describes

no life experience i have

never written a book so when we

include never before a past participle

verb in this pattern

it means no life experience at any time

in the past i’ve never written a book

this sentence i’ve written a book means

at some point in the past i had the

experience

of writing a book this however means

no experience i mentioned this point

right here this

i’ve ive one pronunciation point

for present perfect tense is about this

reduction this

shortening of sounds when we’re using

have as in i have or we

have we make a v sound in fast speech

i have becomes ive we have becomes

weave when the subject however is he

or she or it uh for example he

has or she has is reduced to he’s

she’s so there’s this z sound that

happens here

in this case i’ve used i’ve so please

keep this point in mind

we’ll see something different with the

past perfect tense

so this is a refresher on present

perfect tense

if you’d like to know more about present

perfect tense there are some other

videos on the english class 101 channel

that you can check

for some more example sentences and some

more detailed explanations

so let’s compare this to past

perfect tense again i have a diagram

here of the present now the future

and the past one key difference that you

can

maybe see quickly is that here

all of the situations involved

everything in this situation

is in the past so we’re not talking

about

the present here everything happened in

the past

here we’re talking about the

relationship between the past

and now so keep this in mind

these sentences can be used to talk

about

things that happened in the past

continued and then stopped

uh at a certain point in time so let’s

look at the explanation

we use past perfect tense to express

actions

that started in the past and continued

to a specific point in the past so this

is an

action yes or it can be a condition

so for example we talked about a person

being sick that’s a condition that’s a

good example of a condition or a state

so started in the past continued to a

specific

point in the past maybe something

happened something changed it or we just

want to

note that this is an important point in

the past

i’ll show some examples in a moment

we can use past perfect with the

progressive again the ing

form of a verb we use this we tend to

use this

with when plus a past tense

verb like a clause that uses a past

tense verb

and we do this to show an interrupted

action

so the image here is an action is

continuing continuing

continuing and we use past perfect to

describe that action

something happens we use when

to mark that point and then we add a

past tense verb clause to show the thing

that happened

so again i’ll show an example of this in

a moment

finally we can use this for life

experience that was

true in the past so maybe something has

changed

but we want to talk about something that

was true

in the past or that happened in the past

or a condition

in the past that maybe is different or

kind of is important to talk about in

relationship

to experience now it’s a complex point

so let’s look at some examples that use

this

first i had been

to 10 countries by my 25th

birthday so let’s break down this

sentence

here i begin the sentence with my past

perfect phrase i had been

so here we see a similar pattern with

the present perfect tense

we’re using the verb have yes but

because it’s

past tense past perfect tense

we need to conjugate we need to change

this verb

to past tense so to make past perfect

tense

we use had plus the past participle verb

form

in this case i had been

okay so i had been to 10

countries this is reflecting a past

condition past life experience

by my 25th birthday

so by can mark a point in time

it’s like up until this point in time

so here let’s look at this in terms of

our timeline

we know by my 25th birthday

is the key point in time in this

sentence

and we see past perfect tenses used to

explain this condition

i had been to 10 countries so this is my

life experience

so we can imagine this is the speaker’s

25th birthday here

before this time or rather by this point

in time

in this person’s life experience he or

she visited

had been to 10 countries

so we use past perfect to show that

so this is useful if you want to tell a

story or you’re talking about

gradually gaining life experience

so the speaker is talking about their

25th birthday

this uh suggests this is a past point in

time

so this is how we might explain these

kinds of life experiences

and gradually learning and growing and

doing other things

let’s look at another example here an

interrupted action

we had been working on the project for

three weeks

when it was suddenly cancelled

we had been working on the project for

three weeks

when it was suddenly canceled so here we

see one of the big

hint words i mentioned this when as i

talked about here

when comes before a simple past tense

statement in this case

passive it was suddenly cancelled so

here is my

past tense portion here i’m using

we had been working here’s my past

perfect portion again with progressive

so this shows an action that was

continuing

we had been working on the project for

three weeks when it was

suddenly cancelled so when marks the

point

of change in a continuing action

so this is something maybe our team was

working

continuously on here the project was

suddenly canceled we use

when to mark that interruption or that

stop point

so we use this with the progressive

tense because there’s an

actual action happening we wouldn’t use

this

like i had been traveling to 10

countries

that sounds like a person was

continuously moving from country to

country

and it doesn’t sound natural at all we

just want to talk about life experience

here

this sentence however shows us that the

action was

continuing like non-stop we had been

working

this was a continuing thing but it was

interrupted

our interruption is marked with when and

a past tense clause okay

let’s go to one more kind of complex one

again this uses a negative i talked

about this

negative over here i’ve never written a

book

let’s look at how we might use a

negative with past

perfect i’d never eaten sushi

before i visited japan

so here another pronunciation point i

mentioned we use

and when we reduce the i have

he has patterns in present perfect tense

when we use past perfect tense we have a

similar reduction

but because we only use had we just make

d sound i had becomes i’d we had becomes

weed there’s a small d sound so

i’d never eaten sushi before i visited

japan i’d never eaten sushi before i

visited japan

so here we have right here a good hint

past tense situation a past tense clause

so before i visited japan so here’s a

key point in time so the speaker

has had the experience of visiting japan

so here

visited japan before that

the speaker did not have the experience

eating sushi so we expressed that with

i’d never eaten sushi before

i visited japan you might hear some

people say i’d never eaten sushi before

visiting japan that’s also okay

but the key point here we’re

communicating

lack of experience in the past

before this more recent experience

so we use past perfect to do this to

show these relationships

between past situations between past

actions past conditions and so on so

when we want to be very specific

about our timeline we can use past

perfect and simple past tense to do that

so a really good rule is if you’re

telling a story

a past tense story something that

happened in the past

and you want to show the sequence of

events

use simple past for the most recent

action

use past perfect for the action further

in the past

and try not to put too much information

in one sentence

two items is great so if you want to do

it like this

it’s very clear but if you have too many

actions in one sentence it can get

very confusing so again that hint is

used past perfect for actions farther in

the past

like the furthest action in the past

past perfect

the more recent action use simple past

tense to talk about that

so this is a quick introduction to the

differences

between past perfect and present perfect

tense

i hope that you found something you can

use and i hope that it helps you in

telling your stories

more clearly of course if you have any

questions or comments or if you want to

practice making some sentences or

stories

feel free to do so in the comment

section of this video

also if you liked this lesson please

don’t forget to give it a thumbs up

subscribe to our channel if you haven’t

already and please check us out at

englishclass101.com

for some other things that can help you

with your english studies

thanks very much for watching this

lesson and i will see you again

soon bye-bye

want to speed up your language learning

take your very first lesson with us

you’ll start speaking in minutes and

master real conversations

just click the link in the description