Present Perfect x Simple Past

[Miz]

Hello there!

I'm teaching Present Perfect to my intermediate students, and we started a discussion about the differences between this tense and the Simple Past tense. It's been quite tough for me to clear their doubts, and I believe they still don't get the point. Also, I think the book is not helping much with its confusing examples.

What's the difference between "I have cleaned the house twice last week." and "I cleaned the house twice last week."? The book points out we should use present perfect to say that because the time is unspecified. I don't agree (I'm really troubled, huh? lol!). Is it wrong to use the latter construction? If both are correct, can you tell me in which situations I should use one or the other?

And what about "I have never eaten japanese food" and "I never ate japanese food"? I myself have seen some difference between these constructions... The use of never with simple past can reffer to an action that didn't occur in a specific time in the past... As in: "She never went to my house that summer". Here, never would be just to emphasize the non-fulfilled action, right? But that means "I never ate japanese food" is terminantly forbidden to express an action that has never occured up to now? It really sounds weird to me, but I would like to know if it's acceptable in coloquial language.

Please, help!
Thanks,

Milena

[Norm Ryder]

Milena
Maybe if you'd posted this on the "Applied Linguistics" board you would have got a quicker reaction - they all seem pretty hot over there at present

Did your grammar book tell you that there are more uses for the present perfect than for dealing with an unspecified time? A common use is to speak about something in the past that is someohow connected with the present.

Taking your examples:
(1) You would normally say only: "I cleaned the house twice last week". That is a specified time in the past.
You might also say: "I've cleaned the house twice in the last week, so I'm not going to clean it again today just because your mother is coming!" Notice that I changed the phrase to 'in the last week' to emphasise the connection with the present. Leaving it simply as 'twice last week' might be acceptable, but it contradicts the "rule?" about unspecified time, so doesn't quite ring true to this native speaker's ear. Others might care to differ.

(2) "I have never eaten Japanese food" means that through the whole past, right up to the present you have never tried so much as a takeaway sushi. Your rulemaker would also probably argue that this is unspecified time - it is only limited by each present moment of your existence. On the other hand, you could say: "I never ate Japanese food the whole time I was in Tokyo!" because that, in fact, is a specified time, and is disconnected from the present. Does that also explain the legitimacy of "She never went to my house that summer"?

Milena, this is a more-or-less off-the-cuff reply, and I may have missed the point of some of your problem; but it will get a conversation started, and I hope a bit more clarity in the end.

Norm.

[sita]

[Lorikeet]

Hiya!

"I have cleaned the house twice last week." and it must have some connection with the present.
"I have cleaned the house twice last week, look how nice it looks!"

I cleaned the house twice last week.

I can't accept "I have cleaned the house twice last week, look how nice it looks!" as a good sentence. I have no idea if it's acceptable in another variety of English, but in mine, it would be perfectly appropriate to say, "I cleaned the house twice last week and look how nice it looks."

I have eaten a hamburger yesterday ( now I am ill) it must have some connection with the present.

I ate a hamburger yesterday. ------ That is over and has no connection with the present.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Same thing with this one. There's no way "I have eaten a hamburger yesterday." sounds good no matter what you add to the end of it. I think it will be interesting to see which kinds of English can accept this and which can't. Clearly, yours does, and mine doesn't .

Lorikeet

[Rania]

I have to throw my lot in with Lorikeet. I would never put a past time marker in a sentence with the present perfect - it doesn't work for me.

I would say
I've eaten something dodgy and I feel ill now
(action happened at unspecified time in the past, the action itself is unimportant but the result - the feeling ill now - is)
I ate something dodgy yesterday and feel ill now. - speaker considers when it happened somehow significant.

I would never teach the use of present perfect with a definite time marker. I've never actually heard a native speaker say somthing like 'I've eaten a hamburger yesterday ...' unless they started the sentence and midway decided that the time was significant and added it.

Sian, you're Welsh, aren't you? Is this common in your dialect?

[daveymon]

Most present perfect statements include a time frame during which an activity occurrred more than once. The words "since," "before," and "until" are good indicators that the present perfect is the appropriate tense. Likewise, adverbs of frequency are good tipoffs, as they show how many times the said activity occurred during the stated time frame.

For instance, "I have never eaten sushi until now." Or "I have eaten sushi three times in the past month." It's tricky, I know, and explaining it can be even harder. What makes it even more difficult is the fact that most native English speakers often erroneously use the past tense when the present perfect is indicated. "I met a lot of women in my life" doesn't make sense unless your life is over. It should be, "I have met a lot of women in my life."

It can help to draw a line on the board, marking the present and a specified time in the past (it may be as far back as when the person was born, or the beginning of time for that matter). Then you can explain to the students that in this time period, this activity occurred x amount of times. 'X' might be several, many, three, never, or a million times.

One could say "I ate dinner three times last week," using the simple past, and it would be correct, because there is no SPECIFIC time in the past referenced. "Last week" is a time frame unto itself. But if you reference a specific time--say, last Tuesday--you'd have to say "I have eaten dinner three times since last Tuesday." That is why words like "since" are important in identifying the correct usage of the present tense.

As hard as the present perfect can be to explain, I find the past perfect to be much harder.

[Norm Ryder]

daveymoon
I was a bit mystified about your using as a test the words "before" and "until" ("since" was no problem); but then realised that you could certainly use the present perfect with "until now" and "before now". Otherwise I'd be likely to use "had" rather than "have", that is, the past perfect. As in the following:
'Before I met Atsuko I had never eaten sushi."

Could you give us some examples of what you have in mind for the use the present perfect with "before" and "until" - it's probably something pretty obvious, but I just can't see my way to it.

Could I also mention another use for the present perfect:
"I've always preferred to eat the food cooked by street vendors when(ever) I've visited India."
On the other hand, I'd say: "Whenever I visited India I always preferred to eat the food cooked by street vendors".
[It works the same for words like "usually" or "often", as well as "always": the Cobuild Grammar calls them 'adjuncts of duration'.].
The second sentence (in the simple past) suggests that I don't visit India any more; the first leaves it open.

Cheers.
Norm

[daveymon]

You were on the right track. "Until" and "before" are used in the negative, as in "I've never had sushi until now." You are correct that this is more often an indicator for the past perfect.

[daveymon]

As to your second question, the sentence "Whenever I visited India I always preferred to eat the food cooked by street vendors" works best with the past tense because it has no reference to the present. The writer of the sentence doesn't plan to visit India anymore, or at least doesn't indicate so.

[Lorikeet]

"I have eaten sushi three times in the past month."

I have trouble with this sentence. I can say, "I ate sushi three times last month." and I can say, "I've eaten sushi three times this month." The former shows the month is finished, so I'm not going to add to my three times. The latter shows the month isn't finished, and I still have a chance to eat some more. Something about "I've eaten sushi three times in the past month." doesn't sound right to me.

[revel]

Good morning!

And here I am with a simplification!

It's called the present perfect because it refers to the present in one way or another. When I say "I've taught ESL for x years" it is probably understood that I am still teaching ESL now. When I say "I taught for x years in New York City" that carries the assumption that I am no longer doing so.

A difficulty that Spanish speakers have with the present perfect is structural interference. That is, Spanish also has a perfect construct; however, a Spanish speaker can use it to refer to a recent past without it necessarily making reference to the present moment. For me, saying "I've seen Mary this morning" might mean that I will see her once again today, while "I saw her" could mean that I won't be seeing her again, or if I will be, it has nothing to do with my having seen her already.

So, I limit the explanations to "past" as a finished thing that isn't a basis for the present moment, while "present perfect" is like a source of the present moment, of which I might be talking.

I also can not accept past markers like "last week" or "yesterday" in present perfect sentences!

peace,
revel.

[Norm Ryder]

Lorikeet
Another example of where different Englishes can work differently, I think.
In Australia, when we say, "in the past month" it doesn't imply that the month is finished, disconnected. It's taken to mean "the month up till now". So that it is possible to say "I've eaten sushi three times in the last month". I guess the same goes where daveymoon comes from.

Norm.

[Lorikeet]

Oh, thanks Norm. I thought there might be something different in different dialects.

[Miz]

Hello There!

I really didn't expect all these replies here, I haven't been online for a while. I'm really glad to be here again.

I really appreciate your help, Norm. All the answers here have been really useful to my own understanding. It's nice to hear from people with various points of view. Based on what you told me, I can now think better about some peculiarities. I confess I had never thought about this time connection with the present moment. I might have read it in some good grammar book, but maybe it just didn't sink in. I was focusing too hard on the action itself, so the concept I had in mind was: when we have an action that occurred in some unspecified time in the past, we use present perfect. And we also do so when we have an action that started in the past and continues up to the present. So, when a sentence like "I have called a friend this week" crossed my way, I got all confused. If we have a time marker, why use present perfect? Now I understand. But we can also say "I called a friend this week", right? Does it depend on my intentions (the week is almost over and I don't intend to call some other friend), or is it another colloquial usage? I really want to dig deep, 'cause I'm a young teacher who is still mystified by English books full of neat schemes, those kinds to avoid too much questioning. I need to get rid of some clichéd concepts. For my sake and my students'.

Only one more thing: "Which of these activities have you done in the past year?" In this sentence, is "in the past year" indeed somehow different from "last year"? If the author chose to write "last year", would he have to use simple past? Does "in the past year" refer to the amount of 365 days right before the moment of speaking? Gee, it may sound really stupid, but I'd never realized that.

I'm really thankful for all your explanations. I believe for us, speakers of Portuguese, it's rather hard to tell with accuracy what are the differences between Present Perfect and Simple Past, since these tenses converge to only one in our language.

Thank you all

Milena

[Norm Ryder]

Hi Milena
I've been surfing other 'beaches' this last week and have only just come across your latest post.

As you've seen from the discussion, the answer to your question will depend on where your students plan to do business. From Lorikeet's post, in North America the phrase "in the past year" seems to be treated the same as "last year"; but if your students are among those planning to join the dozens of computer programmers etc from South America and elsewhere who are coming to Australia, you might teach them the sentence you give at the beginning of para 3. Also (to answer q.3, para 3) in Australia when we say 'in the past year' we would probably be thinking in terms less specific than 365 days - it's a fairly loose expression. What's your view daveymoon?

And yes, if you say 'last year' you would use the simple past tense.

Back to para 2: "I called a friend this week" is thinking of the call simply as a past, distinct action without any grammatical reference to a subsequent event. You could say: "I called a friend last week, and she told me that unless I came back home quickly someone was ready to take my job". Maybe you could argue that this has a connection with the future; but grammatically, all you are doing is reporting a single event that occurred at a past point in time during the week. It would be different if you had said: "During the past week I've had three phone calls from my friend, telling me etc." In that case you're placing the events in a period of time that runs right up to the present ... again, that is, in the Australian way of thinking - it seems the North Americans (if Lorikeet reflects the general view) would tell you to use the simple past if you say "in the past week".

So a lot depends on where your students aim to use their English. We'll probably get some input now from North America, and if it supports Lorikeet and - as is likely? - most of your students will be talking to North Americans you'll have a much simpler time teaching them the present perfect!

In any case, if you decide to holiday out here, I'm sure we won't have any trouble understanding you whichever form you use.

Norm