BUSINESS ENGLISH PARIS: PRESENT PERFECT VS SIMPLE PAST

BUSINESS ENGLISH PARIS: PRESENT PERFECT VS SIMPLE PAST

Teaching Business English has its challenges and one of the biggest challenges I have had as a Business English coach is explaining to my students when to use the Simple Past and when to use the Present Perfect. I think the problem is that for native speakers, we often don’t care about the grammatical rules and we conflate these two tenses quite a lot, and we never really think about what differentiates them. So, when it is time to explain to an English learner how to choose between the two, I often feel like a deer in headlights.

I will give you an example. You are a parent. You go home after a long day at the office and the children are sitting there playing video games. They didn’t even look up when you entered the apartment to say hello to you. You wonder: Have they done their homework?!(present perfect). You say to the child, “did you do your homework?” (simple past). Is this grammatically correct?

My answer? That’s a damn good question. I think it is, but a linguist might disagree…

In  my view, you can clearly ask both questions and both be grammatically correct.  But arguably, “have you done your homework” is probably more correct. Pourquoi? I don’t know! Parce que c’est comme ça!  😆

But seriously. I think it is more correct because...putain!.....because the present perfect is an action done in the past (here, doing homework) with a consequence in the present (you are playing video games but you probably have not done your homework?!!!).

But the thing is, a native English speaker is probably more likely to ask “did you do your homework?” and grammatically, no one would think a mistake has been made. Do you understand what I mean?

The present perfect and the simple past are a total nightmare, in other words. They make me break out in hives every time a student asks me to explain. 80 percent of the time, either one works. 20 percent of the time, you have to choose one or the other. And that is when it is a nightmare. The other 20 percent of the time.

For me, I think the general rule is that the simple past is for actions that are definitively over and have no connection to the present and the present perfect is for the other actions that are not definitively over. “Yesterday, I ate steak.” Clearly, yesterday is definitively over and the simple past is the only correct choice. You absolutely, positively, could NOT say, “Yesterday, I have eaten steak.” Yesterday is a word that goes only with the simple past. Yesterday and now have no connection in the grammatical world. They run parallel and never meet.

Other words like last year, six months ago, Last Monday, A hundred years ago, In 2019, etc are also, clearly, definitively in the past and must be used with the simple past, not the present perfect.

But it is not so simple. The present perfect is a bloody trap.  This tense is a total and complete TRAP!  Take a look at the following sentences:

1.       I have finished.

2.       I have just finished eating.

3.       I have already finished eating.

4.       I haven’t finished eating yet.

5.       I have lived in Paris for ten years.

6.       I have lived in Paris since I was 20 years old.

7.       I have never lived in Paris.

8.       I have not lived in Paris yet.

9.       I have already lived in Paris!

10.   Have you ever lived in Paris?

11.   I haven’t visited Paris this year.

12.   This is the second time I have been to Paris.

13.   This is the first time I have been to Paris

14.   This is the only time I have ever visited Paris.

15.   I have worked in this company since 1999.

16.   I have worked for this company for 25 years.

17.   I haven’t worked for that company yet.

18.   I have already worked for that company.

19.   I have just quit working for that company

20.   I haven’t threatened to quit my job so far this week. But the week is young.

If you look closely, you can see the action in the past with a connection to the present for all of these sentences. But sometimes, it is hard to see the connection between past and present when using the present perfect. And often, it is hard to tell when to use the present perfect and when to use the simple past even when you are a native speaker. But that is English for you. Very complicated. OK? You just have to  practice, practice, practice. Till it is second nature and you are not obsessing about grammatical rules.

See you in the next one. Have a great day.

(Please forgive my gros mot in this post but sometimes, I gotta 😊.)