Present Perfect Continuous vs Present Perfect - Learn English Tenses (Lesson 3)

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Hello, everyone. You're back with me new at Anglo-link. This is the third video in our learning the tenses series

If you haven't watched the first two videos you may want to go and watch them first

In this third video. I'm going to help you understand the differences between

Present perfect continuous, "I have been doing" and present perfect simple "I have done"

When you're ready we can get started.

Present perfect continuous and present perfect

Let's look at the formulation of the two tenses

In the previous video we looked at how to formulate present perfect continuous

Let's remind you

I have been playing tennis

So the verb "to be" conjugated

in the present perfect and then the main verb with "ing"

You have been playing tennis

He/she has been playing

We, you and they have been playing

Let's look at present perfect

So it's just the verb "have" and the participle:

I have played tennis

You have played tennis

He/she has played

We, you and they have played

Right let's look at usage

First a reminder: When we use the present perfect continuous,

action that started in the past and is still in progress

I've been studying all morning

I've been doing the exercises since 11 o'clock

He has been driving for five hours

Let's look at some examples of the present perfect and how they are different from the ones

You've just looked at

The present perfect refers to a completed action

An action that's complete at the time of speaking. It's not going on anymore

Look at the first example:

I've studied three sections until now

Let's look at the two sentences together:

I've been studying all morning

You started this morning, and you're still studying

Within this time you have completed, you have finished three sections

Now this is present perfect:

I've studied three sections until now

I've already done half of the exercises

Let's look at the present perfect continuous:

I've been doing the exercises since 11:00

So you started at 11:00, and you are still doing the exercises

But within this time you have already finished half of them

Present perfect:

I've already done half of the exercises

And the last example:

He has driven 500 kilometers so far

Look at the continuous form:

He has been driving for five hours

He is still driving

Within this time he has completed 500 kilometers of driving

By the way, so far is a synonym for until now

Let's look at the timelines now to make it perfectly clear for you

What the difference is between the two tenses are

Here is the timeline for present perfect continuos

An action that started in the past

Has been going on until now

It's still going on

and will go on for a while

Remember that you can refer to this tense with these two words since and for

Since indicates the exact time that the action started in the past

And for tells us how long the action has been going on

Let's have a look at the timeline for the present perfect, and you will see that it will look very very different

Here's an action that happened in the past

It's a completed action at some point in the past

we don't know exactly when or we don't want to say exactly when

What's important is that the action is complete

now at the time of speaking

Let's look at some common mistakes

You may say or hear I have waited for half an hour

Because you're still waiting

The action is still going on. You should use the present perfect continuous

I have been waiting for half an hour

The action is not complete yet

Let's look at another example:

You may hear or say he has slept since 9 o'clock

Once again because the action is going on, is still in progress. He is still sleeping

We should be using the present perfect continuous

He has been sleeping since nine o'clock

Sometimes you may make the reverse mistake

For example you may hear or say:

Has been snowing twice this week

Now the word twice

means two times

Indicates two finished completed actions

It snowed once, stopped. Is snowed again and stopped

It's not snowing at the moment

Therefore we need to use the present perfect

It has snowed twice this week

One last example to make sure you really got the difference between these two

She has been writing many books

It's okay to say she has been writing for many years. She is a writer

But to say the number of books she has already written

referring to completed books

You need to use the present perfect

She has written many books

That's it for our third video

I hope you have found it useful as you know you can now go to our website anglo-link.com

To read the explanations and do the exercises that will help you review this point

Thank you very much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Bye now