How to form the present perfect in English

How to form the present perfect in English

In this entry we are going to take a look at the present perfect.

There is a lot to say on this tense, so consider this a simple introduction on how to form the tense.

How to form the present perfect

Subject  +  have / has  +  past participle

• I have finished
• You have found
• He has done
• She has started
• It has arrived
• We have heard
• You have passed
• They have  worked

Negatives

For negative sentences, simply add “not” after “have” or “has”.

• I have not finished
• He has not done

Contractions

When speaking we usually use the contractions, as follows:

• I have -> I’ve
• You have -> You’ve
• He has -> He’s
• She has ->She’s
• We have -> We’ve
• They have -> They’ve

The negative contractions are as follows:

• I have not -> I haven’t
• You have not -> You haven’t
• He has not -> He hasn’t
• She has not ->She hasn’t
• We have not -> We haven’t
• They have not -> They haven’t

Questions

For questions we simply change the order of the subject and have/has. So…

Have / has     +   subject  +  past particple  ?

• Have I won?
• Have you finished?
• Has he seen it?
• Has she written to me?
• Have we listened to the radio today?
• Have they replied?

The Past Participle

The good news is that most English verbs are REGULAR! For these, we simply add -ed to the end of the verb (worked, wanted, washed)

The bad news is that the most common English verbs are usually IRREGULAR! (been, done, lost, found, written, read, bought)

When do we use the present perfect?

We will look at this in more depth later in the blog, but generally, we use the present perfect in English when the action happened in the past, but has a result NOW. Look at these examples:

• I’ve lost my phone  (= I don’t have it now)
• My mum has gone to the shops (= She is there now)
• Have you seen my wallet? (= Do you know where it is now?)
• We’ve bought a new house (= We have it now)
• She’s cleaned her car (= Her car is clean now)
• He has not read the book (= He doesn’t know the book now)