What's the Difference Between Past Simple and Present Perfect?
Sometimes the myriad of verb tenses in English can be confusing. Today I'd like to help you understand the difference between the past simple tense and the present perfect tense.
Before we get into the details, let's do a quick review.
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What is the past simple tense?
The past simple tense is a conjugation of a verb that tells what happened in the past, usually at a specific time, but not always. It may be a regular or irregular conjugation, depending on the verb. Here's a few examples: <br>
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Regular Conjugation <br>
I walked to the park. <br>
You walked to the park yesterday. <br>
They called me on the phone to wish me a happy birthday. <br>
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Irregular Conjugation <br>
I sang my favorite song. <br>
He went to the store. <br>
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What is the present perfect tense?
The present perfect tense is a compound tense, which means it uses a form of the main verb (called a past participle) and another verb (known as a helping verb). The present perfect tense talks about an event that happened in the recent past or something that is still meaningful today. Here's a few examples: <br>
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Regular Conjugation <br>
I have walked here before. <br>
They have traveled to Europe. <br>
She has cooked pizza. <br>
He has gotten his money back. <br>
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Irregular Conjugation (of the past participle)
I have seen that movie. <br>
He has not seen that movie. <br>
They have gone to the training. <br>
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So what's the difference?
You may have already noticed some differences in the description of the tenses. I'll demonstrate these differences better with some comparisons and further explanation.
First, let's look at these two sentences:
I walked to school yesterday. <br>
I have walked to school before. <br>
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Can you spot the difference? The first sentence is in past simple. It gives a specific time the speaker walked to school: yesterday. The second sentence is written in present perfect. It does not give a specific time for the action; it just says "before"--meaning, sometime before now. <br>
In the first sentence, the speaker is emphasizing the time the action took place. In the second sentence, the speaker is emphasizing that the action definitely has happened. In context, you can probably see this more clearly:
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Scenario 1
Speaker 1: "How do you get to school?" <br>
Speaker 2: "Well, I usually ride the school bus. But I walked to school yesterday." <br>
Do you see how the speaker is clarifying when he or she walked to school? The time is very important in this case. So the past simple tense is used. <br>
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Scenario 2
Speaker 1: "Do you walk to school?" <br>
Speaker 2: "No, I ride the school bus. But I have walked to school before." <br>
In this example, Speaker 1 is asking about whether Speaker 2 usually walks to school. Speaker 2 needs to answer yes or no--the focus is on whether he or she does an action. The time is not important, so Speaker 2 uses the present perfect tense to communicate that even though he or she does not walk to school anymore, he or she did before. This is what it means when we say that the present perfect tense is used when an action in the past is still meaningful in the present. The action is done, but in this case, we still care about what happened.
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When should you use the past simple and when should you use the present perfect?
In summary, when you want to talk about an action in the past and time matters, use the past simple. <br>
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When you want to talk about something you did before, but don't do anymore, use the present perfect.
I hope this helps you know when to use these two tenses correctly! If you have any questions, feel free to write a comment. And please let me know if this helped you!
28 de marzo de 2018
