4. Present Perfect

The Present Perfect tense is a rather important tense in English, but it gives speakers of some languages a difficult time. That is because it uses concepts or ideas that do not exist in those languages. In fact, the structure of the Present Perfect is very simple. The problems come with the use of the tense. In addition, there are some differences in usage between British and American English.

How do we make the Present Perfect tense?

Look at these example sentences with the Present Perfect tense:

 

Present Perfect for experience

We often use the Present Perfect to talk about experience from the past. We are not interested in when you did something. We only want to know if you did it:

 

Connection with past: the event was in the past
Connection with present: in my head, now, I have a memory of the event; I know something about the event; I have experience of it