Present perfect and past simple

Improve your English today at ANGLOPOD.COM. Hi everyone, I’m Dan and today we’re going to look at the difference between the present perfect tense and the past simple tense in English. When and how do we use them? Let’s look at some examples…

Consider this example. I’m hungry. Why? Here are two reasons. “I DIDN’T EAT breakfast this morning”. This is past simple. It refers to an event and a time that is finished in the past. Breakfast time is finished and this morning is now finished. We can assume it is now past midday, so it’s the afternoon. Therefore, we use the past simple for events and times that are finished in the past.

Now here is the second reason. “I HAVEN’T EATEN all day”. This reason is in the present perfect tense. You can see that the grammatical structure of the sentence is a bit different. To make the present perfect we use the auxiliary verb HAVE and the past participle of the main verb, in this case EATEN, from the verb EAT. EAT is the present, ATE is the past, EATEN is the past participle.

So why do we use the present perfect and how is it different from the past simple? Whereas the past simple refers to a point in time that is finished, the present perfect refers to a period of time that starts in the past and goes right up to now, the present, when we are talking.

In this case, “I HAVEN’T EATEN all day” refers to a period of time that starts at breakfast, at the beginning of the day, and goes up to now, the time we are referring to. I am hungry now, so we are talking about the whole period of time from breakfast until now. I didn’t eat anything during that time, which means I’m hungry now. “I’m hungry now because I HAVEN’T EATEN all day”.

You can use the present perfect to talk about so many things, such as experiences you have had or things you have or haven’t completed. HAVE you BEEN to ANGLOPOD.COM yet? It’s a great way for you to practise your English! See you soon!

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