Transcription
Hi everyone, welcome back. And we're looking at Unit 4, and we are studying the present perfect. This is the simple, bus, okay. So let's get started. Cut and Leo are talking about sports.
They have tried—you're in great shape, Leo. Do you run a lot? Thanks, yeah, I guess I do, but I practice a lot of sports too. Oh, really? Like what? Well, I'm really into snowboarding. Have you ever tried it? No, I haven't actually. I've never seen snow before. I prefer surfing. Have you ever gone surfing? Yes, I have. I went surfing when I was in Hawaii. Did you like it? I wasn't very good; I fell a lot. Well, maybe someday I can give you some tips. Sounds great. So are there any other sports you practice? Yeah, I love mountain climbing. Have you ever done it? Actually, I have. I've gone mountain climbing many times, but I prefer ice climbing. Have you ever gone ice climbing? Uh, no, I haven't. I've never seen snow before, remember? Oh, right. So what other sports have you tried? Well, last week I went skydiving; that was pretty cool. Have you ever gone? It's pretty extreme. Yeah, I did that a lot when I was younger, but I prefer BASE jumping now. What's BASE jumping? Well, instead of jumping from a plane, I jump off cliffs or buildings. It's fun. Do you want to go sometime? Oh, how about we just stick to running for now?
So before we start comparing the present perfect with the simple past, it's a good idea to remind ourselves of the structure of the present perfect tense. So the structure is: the subject plus have or has plus the past participle, and then any other information. So if we take an example from the dialogue, we could say, "I have gone ice climbing." Okay, so the subject is "I," which is in the first person, so we use "have" here, and we're using the past participle of "go," which is "gone." Miss person—well, he has gone ice climbing. I have gone ice climbing. [Music] Remember, it's much more natural to contract the subject and have, so you could say, "I've gone ice climbing," and it's also possible to make this a negative sentence, and to do that you would make "have" negative, so "I haven't gone ice climbing."
So the present perfect has a lot of functions, but the easiest way to differentiate it from the simple past is to look at it in terms of unspecific time and specific time. When we use the present perfect, we are always talking about unspecific time, and when we use the simple past, we are always talking about specific time. So let's look at this example: We have the question, "Have you ever gone surfing?" Okay, so the first thing we can tell about this question is that it starts with an auxiliary verb, so it's a yes-or-no question. And to answer this in the present perfect, you can say, "Yes, I have," or "No, I haven't." If you answer, "Yes, I have," it means it has happened, but at an unspecific time in your life. It could have happened at any point in your life, but it has happened. If you answer, "No, I haven't," well, that means we haven't done it in our lives. Okay, it hasn't been done. But now, if we ask the same question and we want to answer in the simple past, things are a little different. For example, "Have you ever gone surfing?" The person might say, "Yes, I have. I went surfing when I was a teenager." And we've just used the simple past: "go," "went." So this happened at a specific time in this person's life. We know by the response that this happened in his teenage years. Or, so might say, "I went surfing when I was on vacation in Hawaii." Again, we have this specific time used with simple past: "go," "I went surfing when I was in Hawaii," and we can put that somewhere on this timeline. Okay, it happened at a specific time, so we used the simple past.
Other ways we can identify the present perfect in the simple past is with—with some of the words or phrases that we use. So if we look at these phrases here: "two months ago," "last week," "when I was 8 years old." So these time phrases represent specific times in the past, so obviously we are going to use these with the simple past. But we also have some other terminology: "already," "yet," "since," and these terms we can only use with the present perfect. The only one we can use in both is "for," so "for" can be used with both the present perfect and the simple past, and I'm going to explain how we use these terms with these tenses. So let's look at these terms in more detail. So the first one that we're going to look at is "already," and "already" is used with the present perfect tense, and "already" is for a completed action. So, for example, we could say, "I've already gone to the bank." It has happened; it's been completed. You can see "already" comes here, just before the verb or the past participle. Okay, "I've already gone to the bank." "Yet" is also used with the present perfect, and we use "yet" when we expect the action to be completed, but it is incomplete at the moment. So an example: "I haven't gone to the bank yet." Okay, it hasn't happened, but we do expect it to happen. "Yet" can also be used in present perfect questions. Okay, so "yet" goes at the end of a question. For example, "Have you gone to the bank yet?" "Yes, I have." "No, I haven't." And then we have "since," and "since" is always used with the present perfect, and it talks about a definite time in the past. So if we look at the example, "I've been in the bank since 2 p.m." So it means I came to the bank at 2 p.m., and I'm still at the bank. I've been there since this specific time, this definite time in the past. "For," on the other hand, can be used with both tenses, present perfect and the simple past, but the meaning will change. So the first example—okay, so "for" is for a duration of time, and here it is with the present perfect: "I've been in the bank for an hour." So it means this person is still inside the bank, and they have been there for an hour. It's not a specific, a definite time in the past; it's a duration of time. Okay, it's an hour. So we use "for," and if we use it with the simple past, "I went to the bank for an hour," well, this is different. This means this person isn't in the bank anymore; they left the bank, but when they were there, they were there for the duration of one hour, but now they've left; they've gone.
So finally, let's look at this example, and this example is incorrect in two ways. The sentence reads, "I've already seen the new Pixar movie last week," and we have a specific time in the past, which we know is used with the simple past, and we have "already," which is terminology we only use with the present perfect. So we need to decide whether we want to use the present perfect here or the simple past. So you could say, "I saw the new Pixar movie last week," which is the simple past. We have eliminated "already" and eliminated "have," and instead of using the past participle, we've just used the past: We just saw—"I saw the new Pixar movie last week." And if we want to make this a present perfect structure, we would say, "I've already seen the new Pixar movie," and it's the same except we just remove this specific time in the past. Okay, so both of these expressions are correct: For this simple past one, it expresses a specific time, and the present perfect one expresses a nonspecific time. So that's everything for this video. So if you would like to try the activities below, thank you and goodbye.