Mr.Silva's Digital Planning: Present Perfect

Present Perfect

Introduction

When teaching the present perfect, or explaining the present perfect, it is often easiest to focus on the use of the present perfect than the meaning. This is especially true for the first time students encounter it (usually associated with the use of talking about experiences).
However, sooner or later you will be looking at different uses of the present perfect, and more often than not its relation with the past tense. This is where often things get tricky, partly because of the potentially misleading word PRESENT in present perfect. It could be worthwhile to focus the students’ attention first on the PERFECT and then the PRESENT. Doing this, rather the other way around, will make explanations of the uses of the present perfect easier.

An easy way of explaining perfect is to use the word before. But since the past simple is also technically before the present, this does not cover all the uses of the perfect aspect. Another technical term is in retrospect, for which looking back is easier. So the present perfect is before the present, or looking back from the present.

Experiences

A frustrated teacher once asked “How many activities can you make for the present perfect?” Since the present perfect is used to talk about experiences, the possibility for activities is as endless as that of experiences that human beings can have.
Have you ever… questionnaires are good for restricted personalised practice. Group the questions around a particular theme. Here are some examples:

Cinema experiences
Have you ever met a movie star? Have you cried in a cinema? Have you left the cinema before the movie ended? etc.
Computer experiences
Have you ever been in a video conference? Have you ever had a computer virus? Have you ever used an Internet chat? etc.
Health experiences
Have you ever spent a night in hospital? Have you ever broken a bone? Have you ever had an operation? etc.
School experiences
Have you ever cheated on an exam? Have you ever had a crush on a teacher? Have you ever played truant? Have you ever copied homework from someone else? etc.

These can be done by students in pairs, or organised into a larger survey, with students having different questions and reporting back their findings. In either case students can be encouraged to ask follow up questions (when, who, with…) which will prompt the switch from present perfect to past simple.

Why not?

That tricky use of the present perfect to “talk about an action that happened in the past but that has relevance now” can be practised with a variety of drills. Here is one, for example. Write the following on the board.

Because I’ve seen it a hundred times!
Because I’ve read it!
Because I’ve finished my work!
Because I’ve never met him!

Tell the students they must respond to one of your prompts with an expression from the board. Call on individual students and ask questions which will elicit one of the answers.

Why don’t you want to see Mission Impossible 2?
Why don’t you have your book today?
Why are you sitting there doing nothing?
Why don’t you ask him out?

You can make your own prompts and answers like this, or you can just make the questions and challenge the students to come up with their own (perhaps more creative) answers beginning with the sentence stem:

Because I’ve …
Because I haven’t..
Show the sign

The choice of the words FOR and SINCE are often confused by students when using the present perfect. A game can be made out of these choices. Ask the students to make two “signs” that they can hold up (these can be a simple piece of paper folded over). Tell them to write FOR on one sign, and SINCE on the other. When you call out a time expression, they must hold up the right sign. Write on the board “I have been in English class…” and proceed to call out the following times:

2002, last week, two weeks, a minute, hours, ages, when I was a child etc.
Students hold up the right sign.

Life line

A traditional exercise often used in coursebooks is that of a person’s lifeline. It will look something like this:

1971 – Harry is born in London.
1976 – Harry and his family move to Kuwait.
1988 – Harry finishes school and starts working for an Cleanoil, an American oil company.
1996 – Harry is promoted to manager at Cleanoil.
1997 – Harry meets Amina.
2000 – Harry and Amina get married.
2001 – Harry Jr. is born.

Make sentences about Harry’s life up to now. Use the words.

Chart Perfect Present