Present Perfect

We have started studying this tense in class. Present perfect is formed by:

HAVE / HAS + _______-ED or 3rd column of irregular verbs

The verb TO HAVE is in present and it is the auxiliary for this tense such as in these examples:

• She has studied English for three years or She's studied English for three years
  
• He hasn't met her parents up to now
  
• Have they finished yet?

The problem with this tense is to distinguish it from the past tense. The best way is to focus on the reference of time:

• PRESENT PERFECT: anything indiating UP TO NOW such as ever, ust, already, yet, since, for and so on.
• PAST SIMPLE: there is an explicit reference to past such as yesterday, last ___, ___ ago, in ____ and so on. (Check the fotocopy about past simple I gave you in class)

If you need more details and you want to pratise, here you have some good links to do it so:

1. grammar summary with exercises at the end
2. grammar and exercises
   
3. grammar : a bit long but quite complete; exercises at the end
4. an exercise on line
5. in Spanish, just in case you need any help

There is a previous post in this blog about present perfect versus past simple (published in February 2010); click here to see it.