Learn English Tenses: The Present Perfect

Hi, Bob the Canadian here.

Welcome to this English lesson

where I'm going to help you learn the present perfect tense.

- [Narrator] Hey, have you started yet?

- Yes, I've started.

- [Narrator] Sorry.

- No problem.

The present perfect tense is used when you wanna talk

about an action where the time isn't important

or the time isn't specified

or the action hasn't really finished happening.

We use it in sentences like this.

I have worked hard today.

I have learned a lot of new English vocabulary.

So stick around. In this lesson, I'll show you

how to form the present perfect tense.

I'll show you how to conjugate it

and we'll talk about when to use the present perfect tense.

We'll also look at how to form the negative

and of course, how to form questions using this tense.

(classical music)

Let's start by talking about how to conjugate

the present perfect tense.

You do this by taking your subjects,

I, you, he, she, we and they,

and you conjugate the verb to have as your helper verb

so I have, you have, he, she has, we have and they have.

Then you take your verb and you put it

into the past participle.

I'm going to use the verb to call because it's regular,

but you will need to learn a lot of irregular verbs as well.

You would then this.

I have called, you have called,

he has called, she has called,

we have called or they have called.

That's how you conjugate the present perfect tense.

As you know, in English we're always in a hurry

to say things as quickly as possible

so we usually use contractions.