Present Perfect

What is the present perfect tense?

Despite it's name, the present perfect tense deals with actions that happened or started in the past. It is one of the most common tenses in English, and it's an essential part of communicating and understanding English.

Learning how to use the present perfect tense is tricky. In order to use the present perfect tense we must use "have", or "has" in third person, followed by the main verb of the sentence in past participle form. This is can be confusing because "have" loses it's original meaning and the past participle depends on the type of verb.

For instance, consider the sentences

• I have been to New York
• He has finished working for the day.

In the examples above, have/has is no longer treated as a verb, and instead helps the main verb. In addition, we can see that in the first example, the main verb "be" becomes "been" and in the second example the main verb "finish" becomes "finished".

Before discussing any further on how to use the present perfect tense, let us understand when to use it.

When to use the present perfect tense

There are 6 main uses for the present perfect tense

Talking about an action that has been done multiple times in the past.

• I have seen this movie over 20 times.
• I have played soccer more than 100 times.

Talking about an action that recently happened.

• I have just finished writing my thesis.
• We have just gotten married.

Emphasizing a change that happened over time.

• He has become and exemplary young man.
• They have learned so much in such a short period of time.

Talking about an unfinished action.

• They haven't watched the whole series yet.
• I haven't beaten the game yet.

Talking about an ongoing action that started in the past and has not yet finished.

• He has been learning English for the past 5 years.
• We have been worried about you ever since you left.

Adding significance to a completed action.

• He has done it, the crazy fool.

Having talked about the situations in which we use the present perfect tense, all that is left is to understand how to use the present perfect tense.

How to use the present perfect tense

In order to use the present perfect tense we must use the auxiliary verb have/has and the verb in past participle as shown in the table below.

Note 1: the contractions "hasn't" and "haven't" can be used instead of has not and have not.

Note 2: the contractions "I've", "they've", "we've", "he's" and "she's" can be used instead of "I have", "they have", "we have", "he has" and "she has".

Now that we know the grammatical structure of the present perfect tense, only one question remains: how do we know what the past participle of a verb is?

The answer depends on the type verb.

All verbs can be classified into two categories: regular and irregular verbs.

Regular Verbs

The past participle of a regular verb is the original verb with the added suffix 'ed' . For instance,

Note that for regular verbs, both the past simple and past participle are the same.

Irregular Verbs

Unfortunately, there are no rules for constructing the past participle of an irregular verb. Disappointing though it may be, the only way to learn these conjugations is through practice and repetition. A few examples include,

For an exhaustive list of irregular verbs please visit irregular verbs list

Summary

• The present perfect tense is used for speaking about actions that started or happened in the past.
• In the present perfect tense the verb "have" loses it's original meaning and acts as an auxiliary verb.
• When speaking in third person, we must use "has" instead of "have".
• The past participle of an irregular verb cannot be constructed from any rule and must be memorized
• The past participle of a regular verb is the same as the past simple, and can be constructed by adding 'ed' as a suffix.

No sabes usar "markdown", aprende a usarlo aquí markdown