Teacher Discussion Forums

How far have we got with the Present Perfect?

(I have to use large fonts because my eyesight has become worse. Sorry about this.)

If you should find the questions in this forum about Simple Present and Simple Past are only biases or insignificant, try the Present Perfect here.

In my youth, as I in avid eagerness asked about Present Perfect tense in letters by air to some places overseas, they posted to me a free issue of ELT Journal, which was published by Oxford University Press in association with The British Council. In the Journal a P.S. Tregidgo published his rather startling comment: "How far have we got with the present perfect? " He expressed his doubles and dissatisfactions over both conventional and advanced methods to explain the tense. And he finally concluded: “Meanwhile, one thing seems to me to be pretty clear. Whatever the grammarians may say about it, the problem of the English present perfect remains very much alive and kicking!” I didn't subscribe the Journal. I have only one copy of it, the one they sent to me free of charge.

Please understand the comment could not be published without careful considerations by the experienced editors. To some, the conclusion was obvious. As they really could not explain the tense, they had better admit openly. This relieves the merciless pressure added on both teachers and students. Most of all, however, they didn't want to lie and sell falsehood to innocent people. It is immoral for an ignorant teacher to cheat students that they should understand Present Perfect. As a matter of moral, tell them the fact.

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However, many teachers and students still don't believe the difficulty. They know part of Present Perfect and pretend they have got it under full control.

In the following web page, there is a comment by Sarn Rich that can be reckoned as the updated version of Tregidgo's article:
http://www.developingteachers.com/artic ... 1_sarn.htm
Interesting, the criticism against Present Perfect is placed within a website designed for developing teachers. You may wonder Why? To me it is obvious. Rich wants to do something good, as same as Tregidgo did. The insightful comment must be there reminding developing teachers that the tense is a torture, advising them not to push yourself too hard. It is immoral to claim you understand Present Perfect when you actually don't, and tell students to understand it.

Ironically, the author thought at first he had mastered the tense and owned the knowledge enough to teach developing teachers:

Budapest, 1992. I thought the lesson was fine, until Agnes threw down her pens, wailing, 'I'll never understand the present perfect!'

Wailing! How many teachers and students have wailed at the tense? The real hindrance is, however, many confused grammar writers, now teachers, still claim that their explanations are clear and good ones. Students have no reasons to wail, they think. The erudite author is now standing up and kicking at the most popular or advanced theories of our time, which claim they understand Present Perfect. He is so paranoid about the tense that he could not trust anything of it. He ended the article and wrote:

Timelines can be helpful, but may be dangerous if their function as analogies is forgotten (Lewis 1984:170-176). They may also be very different and so potentially confusing.

At last, the author repeated in Appendix:

Several years ago I received a call from a friend. She was hoping for a place on a TEFL Certificate course, and she had a problem. 'Help me' she said. 'I can't get my head round the present perfect.' Easy, I thought. I was wrong.......

If you should find Lewis' "The English Verb" may help the author, please contact him. But you shall take a look at first whether the author did study the book or not. Of course, a man as clever as you must have more understanding than the unqualified author, so I guess you had better write to him directly. Don't just tell him to read it. Rich did read the book but still not understand the tense. Do you get the point?

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The main point of both Tregidgo's article and Rich's comment seems to be only Present Perfect, but in the contents there are really two tenses intertwined: Simple Past and Present Perfect. If Present Perfect is confusing, it is because it is confused with Simple Past. For the past few decades, I have not met a person who could tell the difference between them.

One unpardonable point is that after we have spent energy to separate Simple Past from Present Perfect, in reported speech they have to become one again:
Ex: They reported that they had seen the tiger.
== Past Perfect can be derived from either Simple Past or Present Perfect.
Now the two tenses have to have a difference not so small that students can see clear the difference, and not so big so that they have a reason to combine. Happy now?

Some books have gone too far. Pretending that they can explain the two tense, some grammar writers cleverly claim a falsehood that Present Perfect doesn't stay with past time expressions, and then from their books they hide away any past time expression that can stay with it: in the past, before, over the past four years, etc.

Now the falsehood and concealment are a must, for every single grammar book, or website.

For the past few decades, I have been looking for the first book that may talk about the Past Family, such as in the past, in the past year, in the past two months, during the past three decades, on the past few days, over the past four weeks, for the past few years, within the past four centuries, at the past few meetings, etc. Their pattern is "in the past xx years". They contain the adjective past and thus refer to the past. I still cannot find the book.

The Past Family are difficult to explain because they refer to past but stay with Present Perfect:
Ex: They have worked here for the past three years.
These time adverbials violate the false invention that Present Perfect doesn't stay with past time expressions. They therefore are buried alive. The evidence is invisible: you cannot find any of them in any grammar book. However, just because you cannot find any of these time adverbials explained in an grammar book, it is guilty of concealing the difficulty and selling falsehood to young students.

(Many naive persons claim there is no such concealment, because it is simply invisible.)

Unfortunately, any teacher who, without prior notification of the reality from grammar writers, has preached the falsehood to students, has to defend it against the truth, if the truth is exposed. This is the wisdom of grammar writers who has planned the falsehood: "As now you have committed the crime with us, go along with us, or we all lose our jobs. Morality doesn't make money these days."

Take Collins Cobuild English Grammar (Collins Birmingham University International Language Database, 1990) for example. It claims "Helping learners with real English". The Editorial Team consisted of a dozen of learners. They found real examples from nearly a thousand of periodicals and publications. Though I seldom buy grammar books, I bought one copy of it because I was attracted by its insightful analysis and vast examples. Everywhere they could spot exceptional but useful constructions. Of course, they could do it because they had huge manpower and database. However, as for English tense, they don't found any example of the Past Family. Do you believe these examples were so rare that every member of the Editorial Team could not meet any one? I don't think so. Actually, the luck by which they missed all the examples of the Past Family helped support the familiar rule they wanted to deliver to you:

WARNING: 5.34 You cannot use adjuncts which place the action at a definite time in the past with the Present Perfect.

Having made such warning, they had to be wise enough not to pick up examples like this:
Ex: They have worked here for the past three years.
These examples unfortunately place the action at a definite past time in the past with the Present Perfect. They were therefore left alone in the database, frozen. I guess they would have held a meeting to discuss whether they should give these real examples to reader or not. The conclusion was obvious.

If you can explain that for the past three years doesn't relate "a definite past time in the past", don't tell me. Please tell the Editorial Team so that they can resurrect these valuable real examples.

Allow me to remind you this: Not just Collins Cobuild English Grammar, all grammar books have missed the examples for the Past Family. Fellow teachers, would you explain this?

On different occasions I have discussed with some webmasters over the web, who own a website for English. We discussed about the examples of the Past Family. I then suggested, "if you believe in your own explanation, would you talk about these examples now in your website?"
They usually answered "I think about it", or "certainly we will". Now readers please be informed: they won't. You still cannot find a website talking about these examples.

You may try yourself to report some examples illustrating the Past Family to some websites about English. Tell them you find what they haven't found, and recommend them to put the valuable examples in their websites. You may want to see what happens. No concealment, you say?

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Please be reminded that, both Tregidgo and Rich didn't talk about the examples I have pointed out:
Ex: They have worked here for the past three years.

Therefore, even if my information is infinitesimal and not valuable enough, Present Perfect is still hard to handle.

Xui

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This message is rather long and I didn't review much. I understand there are many mistakes. I strongly remind some filthy linguists not to review it. No response will be provided to you from me.

This message is rather long and I didn't review much. I understand there are many mistakes. I strongly remind some filthy linguists not to review it.

Is there really a need for such a statement?

metal56 wrote:This message is rather long and I didn't review much. I understand there are many mistakes. I strongly remind some filthy linguists not to review it.

Is there really a need for such a statement?

Yes in every initial message. Yes because they aim at me and not at you Metal56. As you see, when the message gets old, people may wonder why I couldn't answer some questions these linguists posted.

I can understand that you have never had such experience.

Xui

Xui wrote:

metal56 wrote:This message is rather long and I didn't review much. I understand there are many mistakes. I strongly remind some filthy linguists not to review it.

Is there really a need for such a statement?

Yes in every initial message. Yes because they aim at me and not at you Metal56. As you see, when the message gets old, people may wonder why I couldn't answer some questions these linguists posted.

I can understand that you have never had such experience.

Xui

But, "Filthy linguist"? It's a bit strong.

You may be greatly surprised to know, Xui, how much I agree with you.

I still think that your knowledge of English is insufficient to be dealing with such matters and that your hectoring manner is unlikely to get you the help that you claim you want. Nevertheless you seem to have finally got to one of the the most tricky issues in in English. This is a far more elusive creature than "Yesterday" or "Newspaper Present" or some of your other odd "crusades".

Perhaps the important thing to remember is that it is a completely unnecessary tense. A luxury. You may say that no tenses are necessary but the Present Perfect seems to me to be more unnecessary than most. American English seems inclined to do without it as much as possible ("I already saw it") and European languages which have something similar use it to a greater extent or hardly at all, which suggests that there is no consensus about where it, or something like it, fits in between Present and Past.

But we can't make it go away.

Nobody's explanation of the Present Perfect seems to be very satisfactory, does it? "More of a present" "A bridge to the past" etc

Personally, I don't explain it. Almost any explanation, even partial, needs to be far more complicated than the student can possibly understand. I just say "This needs to be "have gone" or "have been going" or "go" or "went"" and if I am asked why, I say "Because it's Wednesday" or "Because the sky is blue" or "I don't know".

Do you think a language is a logical system and that everything can be explained? Do you feel the need to explain everything to your students? Do you ever say "I don't know" to them?

By the way. In the world's best known grammar practice book: good old Raymond Murphy, who would be even richer if he got paid for all those photocopies.

English Grammar in Use. Unit 15. Page 30. "Fred has been ill a lot in the past few years" and again on the next page, the second question of the Exercises

you/see/Tom in the past few days ........................................?


So no cover up there, at least. Would you be happier if they put "last"?

JuanTwoThree wrote: I still think that your knowledge of English is insufficient to be dealing with such matters and that your hectoring manner is unlikely to get you the help that you claim you want.
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Very insufficient, I admit.
Tregidgo also admitted.
Sarn Rich have also admitted.

At least we don't need to lie.

I suggest you write to teach these authors, and don't just tell them to read it.

I talk to you this time because I really want someone to help Sarn Rich, or Tregidgo, and thus many developing teachers.

I've had a quick look through Sarn's article, and it appears to me to be a discursive one, a survey of the potential ways to approach this "problem". I am sure Sarn has developed (or rather, had to develop!) his own approach, and doesn't therefore need us to write to him to "help" him, or warn him off of adopting such-and-such an approach (if he has).

The one thing I am not happy about is how he keeps on saying that the meaning the Present Perfect is meant to convey is actually conveyed by other elements in the sentences, and that if you remove those elements, the force of the utterance changes. Well, the fact is, people keep on uttering sentences with those meaningful elements AND the Present Perfect, both appearing together, so there must be a reason for people continuing to use this form "in addition" (i.e. I doubt if it is anywhere near totally redundant yet!), and there are often clear semantic differences between even "minimal pairs" of sentences (as Sarn also somewhat contradictingly points out. He seems to prefer "theory" to descriptions of the function of forms in discourse, as if the "why" could not be inferred from the "what").

Which brings me to about the only example Shun has offered, which I would like to slightly alter rather than hack to pieces: "They have worked here for the past three years".

I cannot believe that the COBUILD Grammar would deliberately exclude evidence of this kind, IF IT WAS OVERWHELMINGLY OBVIOUS (indeed, the marketability of COBUILD lies in its presenting only "real" English). I suspect that there is a tendency to be less specific, to elide - "They have worked here for three years (now)" - besides which, this kind of phrase is not actually a "definite time in the past" at all (COBUILD is surely more alluding to words such as "yesterday", which do not touch "NOW" on timelines etc). More a confusion on Shun's part (once again)!

Anyway, thanks to the towering genius of JTT (Murphy - who he?! ), it seems another conspiracy theory has been exposed for what it is - the rantings of a crazed loner.

BTW Shun I don't mind you taking umbrage and not replying to me, I mean, it's not like you exactly get along with, or make much sense to, even your "friends" here on Dave's, is it? No, I'd prefer no reply, or a reply from somebody who will actually cut me down to size, and for reasons I will be fully able to appreciate, to a crap one from you anyday!

Xui wrote:I hope you can as calm as you are now when in the future one throws four-letter words on you, here in discussion forum. Just discussion forum!!! And people have seconded him collectively.

As for me, I find I am already very polite and moderate.

The problem is, Shun, that the very way you start your threads is "unusual", and you so quickly rub people up the wrong way that a genuine discussion never gets going. Plus, most of us have the "benefit" of hindsight and experience, and just KNOW that you haven't changed a bit! Same old dog, same old tricks.

Instead of just balancing biscuits on your nose or juggling them, try eating and digesting a few for a change.

Xui wrote:How far have we got with the Present Perfect?

(I have to use large fonts because my eyesight has become worse. Sorry about this.)

But you seem able to read other people's posts (in standard-sized font), Shun?

Ah, I get it...you like reading what only you have written!

Yes, the big bold lettering does make your stuff stand out nicely, doesn't it?! Much more important than, and provides the real and only possible backbone, to these "discussions", what!:lol:

I'm expected to debate the present perfect with someone who writes
"Sarn Rich have admitted ".

Am I included in the blacklist of filthy linguists? For saying that your English isn't good enough to be debating such matters?

I can't understand why you are so resistant to the idea that you're not ready to take part in these debates. There are hundreds of things I don't know much about and I don't mind being told it.

Look, everybody on this board usually understands each other perfectly but they have trouble understanding you. And you don't seem to ever completely understand anybody else. You never seem to post on any thread that you haven't started and you never get any answers that satisfy you on the threads which you do start. Maybe you don't know what you're talking about half the time. Nobody else seems to know what you're talking about after all. It'd be something we can all agree about for a change.

JuanTwoThree wrote:You never seem to post on any thread that you haven't started...

Shun did post a few times on Mr Myoga's threads, but he made a dog's dinner of it there too; he eventually stormed off in a huff because he couldn't control what others were writing, much less thinking.