Present Perfect vs Past Simple
Twelve years of teaching, and my students go wrong in exactly the same place. So here is the one question that settles almost every case, the handful of mistakes I actually hear, and a way to fix them in about a week.
Forget the names for a minute
Every time you talk about the past, you are putting what happened inside a box of time. Yesterday is a box. Last year is a box. This morning is a box, and so is my whole life so far.
Then there is one question, and almost everything else follows from it:
Is the box finished?
If the box is finished, use the past simple. Yesterday is over. Nothing else can happen inside it.
If the box is still open, use the present perfect. This morning is still going. My life is still going. Something else could still happen in there.
That is the whole idea. Everything below is me showing you what it looks like in real sentences, and warning you about the four or five places my students trip up.
Past simple: a door that is shut
You use the past simple when the time is finished. Nine times out of ten you will also be saying when, and that is your biggest clue.
I saw her on Tuesday.
Tuesday is done. It cannot be improved. The sentence is closed and so is the box.
I visited Paris last year.
They got married in 2010.
She rang me two hours ago.
I got up, burnt the toast, and left without breakfast.
Stories almost always run in the past simple. That is why you rarely see the present perfect in a novel.
Notice how ordinary those sound. The past simple is the workhorse. If you are ever stuck and the thing is genuinely over, the past simple will rarely make you look foolish.
Present perfect: three jobs, one shape
The shape never changes: have or has plus the past participle. What changes is the job it is doing, and there are only three.
“I have been to Japan.”
When? Doesn’t matter. The point is that it is in you somewhere, and your life is not finished.
“I have lost my keys.”
The losing happened earlier. The problem is now. That is why you would not say it in the past simple while you are still stood outside the door.
“I have drunk four coffees today.”
Today is not over. There is still room in the box for a fifth, sadly.
Say these two out loud, one after the other. You will feel the difference before you can explain it, and that is fine. Feeling it first is how it actually goes in.
I lost my keys. I have lost my keys.
The first one is a story about earlier. The second one is a problem you have right now.
The rule that settles most arguments
If you say when, you must use the past simple.
Yesterday, last week, in 2019, two hours ago, when I was a child. The moment one of those appears, the present perfect is out. No exceptions worth learning.
This one mistake accounts for more red pen than anything else I mark, and it is always the same shape:
I have seen him yesterday.
I saw him yesterday.
She has finished the report last night.
She finished the report last night.
If you fix nothing else today, fix this. It is the error that most marks out a learner, and it takes about a week of noticing to stop making it.
Been and gone are not the same word
This one is small and it changes the meaning completely, so it is worth thirty seconds.
“He has been to Spain.”
He went, and he came back. He is here, standing in front of you.
“He has gone to Spain.”
He went, and he is still there. Do not expect him at the meeting.
So if somebody asks where James is and you say he has been to Spain, you have told them nothing useful about this afternoon.
For and since do different work
Both of them live happily with the present perfect. They are not interchangeable.
A length of time.
for six years · for ten minutes · for ages
A point in time.
since 2019 · since Monday · since I was fifteen
And a warning, because this is the second most common mistake I hear, and it comes from almost every language:
I am here since Monday.
I have been here since Monday.
How long are you married?
How long have you been married?
In a lot of languages the present tense does this job perfectly well. In English it does not, and the sentence lands strangely. It is not that people will fail to understand you. It is that they will hear the seam.
Your turn: find the broken ones
Five of these nine sentences are wrong. Tap the ones you think are broken — they turn blue when you have got one right. Nothing happens if you are wrong, so guess freely.
I have seen him yesterday.
I saw him yesterday.
I am here since Monday.
How long are you married?
How long have you been married?
She has finished her homework last night.
She finished her homework last night.
We have went to Spain.
We have been to Spain.
The last broken one is a different fault. After have, you need the past participle: gone or been, never went.
One honest note about American English
Americans use the past simple in places where the British would reach for the present perfect. Did you eat yet? and I already did it are completely normal in the United States and nobody there thinks twice about them.
So neither one is wrong. What I would ask is that you pick one and stay in it. Mixing them inside a single conversation is the thing that sounds odd, and it is the thing an examiner notices. I teach British English, so everything above is the British version.
Practice
Eight of them. Take your time, and read the reason after each one even when you get it right.
What to do this week
Do not try to remember all of this. Do one thing.
Catch yourself once a day.
Whenever a time word comes out of your mouth — yesterday, last week, in 2019 — stop and check that the verb next to it is the past simple. That is it. One catch a day, for a week.
After about a week it stops being a decision and starts being a habit, and then you never think about it again. That is genuinely how it goes. It has gone that way for every student I have ever taught it to.