Present Perfect Simple and Past Simple

Present Perfect Simple and Past Simple

What do we use them for?

Present Perfect Simple

What do we use it for?

Experiences in our lifetime, or another unfinished period.

• Have you ever had a job interview?

• I've never worked in an office.

Open Ended

Can you provide your own example?

News and recent events, often with a present result.

• They've just offered me the job. (Result = I got the job)

• She hasn't called me back yet. (Result = I'm still waiting to talk to her)

• We can use adjectives like: just, yet and already.

Open Ended

Can you provide your own example?

Unfinished states (when we talk about duration)

• I've only had this phone for a week.

• We've lived in London since 2010.

• We use for to give the duration or since to give the starting point

Open Ended

Can you provide your own example?

Past Simple

What do we use it for?

For completed past actions in a completed past time period

• She didn't get the job.

• Why did you miss the bus?

• We often use past time phrases like last week, a few days ago, when I was a child.

Open Ended

Can you provide your own example?

Present Perfect or Past Simple?

How do we know when to use which?

We introduce a topic with the present perfect and then change to the past simple to talk about the details

I've had lots of job interviews. The last one was about three months ago - it was terrible.

I've lost my keys. Maybe I left them on the bus this morning.

Open Ended

Can you provide your own example?

Don't use present perfect when you describe an action that happened at a particular time

They left yesterday / at four o' clock / ten minutes ago.