Job Discussion Forums

[wangdaning]

Hello all,

A little of a grammar issue here. We, I hope it is not just me, teach students that the present perfect shows something that started in the past and continues until now. The only problem I have is that sometimes, in American English at least, we use it to describe something that is purely past.

Ex. I have been to Florida before and will never go back.

How would you approach this with students? Or how do you teach its use to students?

[natsume]

Present perfect progressive shows something that started in the past and continues until now, "I have been studying for three hours".

Your example is not present perfect progressive, and present perfect decribes something that is already finished in relation to "now".

[jpvanderwerf2001]

Present perfect also describes an experience in the past, the exact time of which is not the focus (and/or is unimportant); "never" and "ever" are often used here:

A: "Have you ever been to Egypt?"
B: "No, I have never been to Egypt."

Best of luck.

[jpvanderwerf2001]

[natsume]

You're right, scratch that.

I have studied for three hours.

Clearly, I need to pay attention to this thread!

Anyway, if you will permit me a post-faux pas, post-grammar reference stab, I would probably explain this to students this way.

"I have been to Florida before and will never go back."


In general, I have been to Florida before on its own describes a past event/past events, and in its usual sense suggests that it is possible for the speaker to return again. This speaker, however, qualifies this by stating that they will never go back for whatever reason(s). I would suggest to students that although the speaker has no intention to return to Florida, the use of the present perfect here still implies that it is theoretically possible.


Very tricky!

[artemisia]

And as said earlier, we don't know when the person went to Florida. It happened at some stage. As soon as you start talking about a specific time period, it'd change to Past Simple.

[elliot_spencer]

I've been to Florida....

Past completed action... don't care when! If I care when I use the past simple...

I find most Americans struggle with the Present Perfect as it is often lacking from US English...

[JPM]

As artemisia said, with present perfect, we don't know when.

So my simple explanation to lower-level students is 'If it has a time marker in it (yesterday, last week, 5 minutes ago etc) use the past tense. If there's no time marker, it's present perfect.'

Hope this helps.
J.

[smithrn1983]

I teach the present perfect in different ways to different students. Broadly speaking, the present perfect is used to connect a past event with the present.

At lower levels I teach one use of the present perfect per lesson, usually starting with past experiences, such as 'I've been to Florida'. The next lesson I talk about past events that continue to the present, like, 'I've studied Russian for 3 years'. Yes, you can use the present perfect continuous here, but why confuse your students? After that I do events starting in the past and repeating up to the present, 'It's rained every afternoon for the past month'. The last bit is past events with present results. 'I've lost my keys' tells you that I do not have my keys now. 'I lost my keys' does not tell you if I have them now or not.

[johnslat]

It depends on the level of the students, and how much in detail you want to get into.
Using the Present Perfect tenses correctly may be the single most difficult grammar item in English.

If you want to keep it (relatively) simple, tell them to use the Present Perfect Continuous/Progressive rather than the Present Perfect Simple when you have "for" or "since" in the context (of course, then you may want to mention that the exception to this would be stative/non-continuous verbs.)

The Present Perfect Simple is used to indicate an action in the general past (as opposed to actions in the Past tenses, which take place at a specific past time and are over - with no connection to the present. To illustrate this, I often ask the students, " Can I say, 'Last week, I was John'?")

I like to use this example to help illustrate the difference:

John never saw snow in his life (John is dead.)

John has never seen snow in his life (John is alive.)

The words/phrases "so far," "up up now," "yet," "recently," "lately" are often used with the Present Perfect Simple (but, of course, most of these - and the frequency adverbs - can be used with other tenses, as well.)

The problem with using the Present Perfect Simple in the example given before

"I've studied English for three years."

is that many listeners/readers would take the meaning to be that the studying took place in the general past, but isn't going on now.

The Present Perfect Continuous/Progressive is usually used to indicate an action that began in past time and is going on now.

I've been studying English for three years (the action began three years in the past and is going on now.)

However, the Present Perfect Continuous can also be (occasionally) used for an action that began in the past but stopped shortly before now - with evidence of the action apparent in the present:

A student walks into the classroom; he's soaking wet. I ask, "Have you been walking in the rain?"

And, just to make it even more interesting, there are a few verbs (e.g. live, work) which, because their meaning usually indicates long duration,
can be used in either the Present Perfect Simple or the Present Perfect Continuous/Progressive:

I've lived here for many tears/I've been living here for many years.

Just a bit difficult for the average EFL/ESL student (not to mention many/most native speakers) to master.

Regards,
John

[dutchman]

[coledavis]

General principle: you are looking at the past from the perspective of the present. There should be some relationship with now. E.g. "I've been to France"/"I've never been to France" relates to experience; you have that experience or you don't have that experience.

If you explain it as one specific or another, e.g. recency, then you may confuse students later on. Explain examples with their specific meanings, by all means, but regularly remind people of the general point.

[TeresaLopez]

[johnslat]

Dear dutchman,

Sorry, the implication escapes my grammatically-sensitive ear. However, I'd be interested in learning whether others make that inference, which eludes me.

Regards,
John

[spiral78]

I agree with John.

I've lived here for five years/I've been living here for five years

seem equal to me in terms of liklihood of continuing to live here in future


*off-track note to self: when was the last time I lived somewhere for five whole years, anyway????