SIMPLE PAST or PRESENT PERFECT? When + how to use them!

Gosh, this looks complicated.

Hey, E. Hi, James from engVid.

Speaking of complicated, Mr. E wants us to

do a lesson on the simple past or the present

perfect.

I know for many of you students, it's very

difficult, because they both seem to be talking

about the past.

Today is your lucky day, because I'm going

to give you three simple things you can work

on that will help you to know when you should

use the simple past and the present perfect.

All right?

Stick around.

And why I give you that is because you're

going to look here and say, "Oh my gosh, this

looks harder than I know."

But really, this is how your brain is

working, and I'm going to simplify it for you.

You've got the confusion, I'm going to make it simple.

Ready?

So, why don't we go start at the beginning?

First thing we want to look at is the simple past.

Okay?

So, we've got "I", "she", "he", "it", "you", "we", and "they".

Okay?

I'll put that over here.

When we do the simple past, we just take the verb and we put it in its past tense.

Now, I'm only going to do regular verbs for this particular class.

Okay?

So, don't...

I'm not going to go into the irregular verbs

like the verb "to be", it's complicated, so

let's keep it simple, shall we?

Now, what you get is the verb, and it's in

the past tense, like "worked" as an example.

All of this, "I worked" would be this one, would be...

If I use this as an example, "I worked", "she

worked", "it worked", "we worked", "they worked",

all the same.

So, this is one of the first things we want to pay attention to.

When we do the present perfect, it's interesting because the perfect might...

You might say "perfect" stands for participle,

because really we get "I have", and for simplicity,

I'm going to put this, "PP", and this is participle.

Okay?

And then we have "she", and this is the first

difference we can see here, "she/it has",

and that's because they are taking in the present.

So, this stays...

This stays in the present, while the second one takes on the past participle, so it's

a past form of the word, so we've got two words versus one word.

That still doesn't help us tell me, well, when should I use them?

I know, we're getting there, but we have to understand how these things look before we

can know what they do.

Okay?

So, not just writing it, but you can understand it when you read it yourself.

Then I'm going to put some examples up here for you.

So, if we're looking here, and I have the past, okay?

Well, let me just make a correction here, because first we want to look at a verb.

I'm going to put a verb here, and then we're

going to look at what would that verb be like

in the past, and what would that be like in

the present, and I'm shortening this for space,

"perfect".

Okay?

I gave you an example to start.

The first one I said was "work".

The simple version of this is "worked".

But if we do present perfect, I have to say "have" or "has worked".

Sorry, I'm left-handed.

Some of you just finally figured that out.

So, we look, "work", "worked", "has worked".

Another example would be "go".

Past is "went", but when we go here...

Now, pardon me, I'm going to go off-screen

for a second, and we can see how it changes.

It doesn't even look the same.

It seems similar to the actual verb itself, but we have the present tense and the past

participle.

Why participle?

Because it's not the same as the past word.

Okay?

So, "has gone", "have gone", "has worked", "have worked", simple past, "worked", and

that's the present perfect.

So that's using two examples showing how they will change if we use them.

Now, how-this is the question-do I use it?

Or how do I know what it means when I see it?

That's what this lesson is about.

So, the first thing I want to show you is time frame.

What is time frame?

When we talk about time frame, what we're trying to say is we want to understand when

this is happening.

If you notice I have here, I have simple past.

The reason why I have that is because it is

a-sorry about that, kids-S, P. Not the best,

but you'll get it.

S for specific, P for point.

So, simple past is a specific point in time, and that's what this is.

S, P, you go right here, it's like right here, right now, at this point.

That arrow indicates a specific point.

Words we use to show this time frame are things like "yesterday".

"Yesterday" is a specific time in history, right?

You know exactly when it was.

Or "one hour ago", okay?

That's a time reference.

So, you might go, "Well, time frame.

Well, what about for present perfect?"

Well, the present perfect, okay, "I'm on my knees.

I'm on my knees, Jesus."

Okay.

I want to show you this.

We're looking here, and we look at the present perfect.

It takes place in the past, okay?

But it doesn't connect, it stops before we get there.

So, when we look at it, it goes, okay, it's happened sometime back here.

It's not connected directly here, but we're talking now.

So, when did it happen?

Sometime back then.

It's not yesterday.

It's not an hour ago.

It's sometime back then, okay?

And we use things to say, like, this, "In my life" is the time frame.

What I mean by that is it's happened sometime in my life.

I went to Tokyo.

I have been, okay, present perfect, I have been to Tokyo.

What does that mean?

Sometime in my life, but when?

I don't know.

If I used the simple past, I would have said, "I was in Tokyo two years ago."

You know exactly when.

You know this has happened in my life, but when?

It's not specified.

However, we know it has an effect on now, okay?

So I'm speaking about it because it has something

to do with what's happening in this moment.

Maybe you say to me, "Have you ever been to Asia?"

And I say, "Yes, I have been to Tokyo."

It has some importance with our conversation, but you don't know when.

I haven't told you yet.

I will have to use the simple past for that.

So when we talk about time frame, with the

simple past, we need to have a specific point,

some exact time we can talk about.

That could be a date.

"I was in Tokyo on March 47th", oh sorry, March 47th, "March 14th, 1977."

That's a specific time.

Or I could say, "I have been to Tokyo."

You don't know when, but it has something to

do with the conversation we're having right

now.

Maybe you say, "Do you like Japanese food?

The best Japanese food is in Tokyo."

And you hear someone say, "Have you been there?"

What they're really saying is, "Have you been there in your life?"

And I'm saying, "Yes, I have been there in my life."

Cool?

So that's the first thing we want to talk about, time frame.

So one of the ways you can tell the difference

of what simple past is saying, or the present

perfect is saying, is they're giving you a time frame.

Is it specific?

A specific time this happened, or did this happen sometime in the past, before now in

your life?

Cool?

That's number one.

A second thing we can consider about the simple

past and the present perfect is completion.

Are the actions completed?

If you look here and I said "specific point

in time", the beautiful thing about the simple

past is it happened at a specific point in time, because now it's finished, now it's

over.

You'll notice I have the same dot here and here, indicating it's a specific point.

So it's a simple past, it's very easy.

If someone said "was", or sorry, that's the verb "to be", you know, "He was here", that

action is now completed, right?

"She worked yesterday", that action is completed.

There is no "Oh, well, is it still ongoing?

When did it happen?"

You know, because of the time.

I like this here.

If you notice I put "time frame time", this

is a finishing line, because when people are

running a race, there's usually a line, and when they break the line, the race is over.

So what we're talking about here is, are actions completed, or what's happening?

Now, in this case, we can say with a simple past, it's easy.

Is what you're speaking about completed?

Are you finished?

Is it finished?

Do you have a specific time?

Yes, then it was completed at that specific time, so these two go together.

At that point in time, this thing was finished, right?

But when we talk about the present perfect, this is different.

Number one, we don't know when it happened.

Hmm?

No, we don't.

But we do know it was finished at some time here, but not a specific time, and it has

an effect on the present, right?

If someone says, "Have you eaten?", you say, "I have eaten already.

I have eaten already."

Well, I know you ate back then.

It has an effect now because maybe I want to give you some food.

You come to my house, and I go, "Hey, I just

finished cooking this chicken, rosemary chicken.

It's beautiful.

Have you eaten yet?"

Notice I use the present perfect because I'm

saying, "Hey, I don't know what's happened

before you arrived at my house, but perhaps before you came some time before now, you

did eat, and if you did, maybe you don't want me to give you some food."

This is the point about talking about now.

It has an effect on now.

And you may say, "Well, no.

I haven't eaten.

I was working all day."

Interesting.

"I was working all day", well, that's another

story, but "was" indicates past, but I haven't

eaten.

So before I came here, this moment, I have not had any food, right?

So there's that mysterious past.

I don't know when you ate, maybe an hour ago, maybe five minutes ago.

In this case, I haven't eaten, so I haven't eaten.

Then you still don't know when, just before now, but it means you're probably hungry so

you can eat now.

So the difference between "here" and "here" is that we know exactly when something was

finished.

Sorry.

Let's go up here.

Same thing, though.

We know it was finished up here.

Down here, we don't know when it was

finished, but we know it has an effect here.

Now, the completed thing up here means it's cut off; it has no effect for now.

Here, the completed thing, we don't know when

it was finished, but it has an effect now.

Cool?

So we've covered two of the three things to help you understand when you should use the

simple past or the present perfect, and what

it means when you see or hear the simple past

or the present perfect.

What information are they asking from you?

They're either giving you a time frame, they're

talking - was it completed, how it was completed?

And now I want to go to the third thing.

This is to give you an idea of things surrounding

the words we're talking about, the simple

past words or the present perfect words, that

will give you an indication in case you're

a bit confused.

"Oh, now I know we're talking about the simple past."

And these are signal words.

"This is my traffic signal."

"The company I work for is too cheap to buy yellow.

They forced me to make a white circle with black.

Nowhere in the world is there a white circle and black on a traffic light."

So if you're confused by this picture, I understand.

You shouldn't be confused by this lesson, but that picture is confusing.

So just close your eyes and imagine a brilliant yellow coming from here.

Thank you.

Now, back to our regular schedule program.

Signal words, just like a traffic light will

tell you to stop or go or be cautious, we

have some signal words that we can use that

tells us that we are dealing with the simple

present and we know - sorry, simple present - that's from Home Alone, if you don't know

that movie.

But he goes, "Oh!"

The simple past and the - sorry, the present perfect.

In the simple past, you're going to see words

like - and I've used some of them already

to help you.

So don't mind me, I'm going to cover this for a second or two, but I'll come back to

show you.

Okay?

Okay, so you're going to be given some words, okay, like "yesterday".

That is a simple past word.

It's very specific when this happened.

"Two minutes ago", no, "two minutes age".

Yes, it's my new English, "two minutes age,

man", okay, "two minutes age", no, "two minutes

ago".

"Two minutes ago", I should have noticed that two minutes ago when I wrote it.

Okay?

So, "yesterday", very specific time, "two

minutes ago", exact time, "one week ago", okay?

This tells me this has happened before at a specific time.

So, if today is Saturday, it happened a week ago, that would be last Saturday.

So you know what?

Let's say this, I'm going to change this one just to make it different.

You could also say this, okay, "last week".

These are very specific.

When did you do it?

Last week.

Last week.

When did it happen?

Two minutes ago.

When did you find out?

Yesterday.

Specific times, yes?

It fits with the time frame and it is completed action, yeah?

Now, let's look at the present perfect.

What words will you see for that?

Well, you're going to see something like this.

You're going to see words like "yet", "already", "never".

Can you tell me when "yet" is?

Well, I haven't told you "yet" either, so

sometime in the past I did not give you this

information, and you're still waiting, and it's important now.

This is when we talked about completed actions

and we talked about time frame in my life.

So in this conversation or video, I have not actually told you "yet".

You still have no specific time, you're waiting.

What about "already"?

Maybe I have told you "already", right?

I have told you "already", I haven't.

But you can see, you're going to go, "When?

You didn't give me a specific time."

I go, "I didn't.

I'm using the present perfect."

But perhaps I will never tell you, right?

I should have used one, "I have never told you this", right?

There's another one.

All of these tell you something has happened

prior to now, and it's important because we're

talking now, but you still don't know exactly yet.

If I'd used a simple pause, you would know exactly when that happened.

Now, you probably noticed how we moved through

this video to explain the simple pause to

the present perfect, that even though this

looked very complicated, I mean, look at it,

look at all this stuff, you started off

going, "Okay, let's start from the beginning.

What do we look at when we see the simple pause?

How is it different than the present perfect?"

Present perfect, also, past participles, we can remember that.

That's what PP stands for.

Then I gave you a couple of examples on how it can change, and okay, now I know what it

looks like.

How does it work?

Well, we went through time frames telling us

when we're working here, we have a specific

point, but here we just know something happened

in the past, we've got no clue when, but then

we just are now.

But it's important what happened in the past because it affects us now, yeah?

We went to talking about completed actions that we know that something was completed

in the simple past at a very specific time, and that's why we did that specific point,

SP, simple past, SP, to remind us.

It's always a very specific point, simplifying this for us.

With the present perfect, we don't know, but we know it affects us now.

That was the dinner thing.

Have you eaten?

No, I haven't eaten yet.

I just jumped ahead to this lesson.

I haven't eaten yet.

When did I eat or when did I not eat?

You don't know.

You just know.

"Yet" tells us something in the past has occurred,

but it's important to the conversation now.

Were we to speak in the simple past, "I ate

five minutes ago", conversation is done because

it has nothing to do with the present, we've just completed and terminated.

Just like I'm going to complete this lesson

by saying thank you very much for coming out,

and I'm going to say this.

If you watched more than one of these videos

of myself and my partner, the worm, you clearly

like us, so you could always just press that

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Yeah?

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Anyway, it's been a pleasure.

I'm James.

See you again soon.