Present Perfect Tense vs Past Perfect Tense Learn English Grammar
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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
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
a
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
of
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
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thanks very much for watching this
lesson and i will see you again
soon bye-bye
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