Search results for 'tag:Present perfect tag:Learning English' matching tags 'Present perfect' and 'Learning English'

Re: Present Perfect Continuous

Clive — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:54:17 GMT

Hi,

Welcome to the Forum.

what is Present Perfect Continuous

Mary has been learning English for three years.

Best wishes, Clive

Re: Difference Present perfect-Present Perfect continuous

Tanit — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 07:31:06 GMT

Besides searching in these forums (which is a good idea ... lots and lots of threads!), you might also listen to this audioclip from BBC Learning English:

Present perfect-Present Perfect continuous (Warning: mp3 file, 2.5 Mb)

Re: had had

Yankee — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 17:27:54 GMT

Hi Mkyol

I'd like to point out a few things:

- The word 'since' does not work in your sentence as it is written. It seems that you want to use the word 'since' to talk about 'from a point in the past up to now', but that doesn't work well with the verb 'started'. The start of something is usually a very short point in time and does not take place over a period of time.

- The word 'since' is usually used with the present perfect continuous, and in that verb tense the verb is extremely connected to the present ('up to now'). To talk about the past time when something began, you need the simple past tense, but you can't use the simple past tense (started) together with the time word 'since' as you have done.

- Using 'had had' would suggest something that was finished/ended before you 'started' -- i.e. she was no longer interested at the time you started. But that wouldn't really make much sense in your sentence. You should use the simple present tense if your mother is still alive and still has this interest.

I would suggest rewriting your sentence in one of these ways:

If you want to talk about a time from the past up to the present, you could write it this way:
"My mother has an intense passion for education, and I have been learning English since junior high school."

If your mother is now dead, or if all of the verbs (events/activities/states) are in the finished past, you could write it this way:
"My mother had an intense passion for education, and I started to learn English in junior high school."

I can't think of any really logical way to use had had (past perfect) in your sentence.

Re: Future continuous tense into passive voice?

Marius Hancu — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 21:53:06 GMT

Found this great article at the BBC Learning English site:
------------

Generally, we avoid using the continuous form of the passive with the future, present perfect, past perfectfuture perfect and , although present continuous and past continuous are quite common and sound quite natural in the passive voice.

The passive:

For the purpose of the chart below I have used the verb to clean, but there are obviously many other possibilities:

	Simple	Continuous
Present:	It is cleaned...	It is being cleaned...
Past:	It was cleaned..	It was being cleaned
Future:	It will be cleaned...	* * ***
Present Perfect:	It has been cleaned...	* * ***
Past Perfect:	It had been cleaned...	* * ***
Future Perfect:	It will have been cleaned	* * ***

Study these further examples of use and note how we avoid using the continuous form of the passive in the final four tenses listed:

This toilet at Terminal One is in frequent use and is cleaned every four hours. It is being cleaned now, so you'll have to use the one that is situated opposite the British Airways check-in desk.
My daughter's portrait was delivered to my house in London before I arrived home. I didn't expect this to happen as it was still being painted when I began my journey back.
You will be told when to board the plane in due course. An announcement will be made, don't worry. And one of my colleagues will be accompanying you all the way to Guadalajara. (NOT: You will be being accompanied...)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv119.shtml

---------

Re: since I have written or wrote

Inchoateknowledge — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 20:46:14 GMT

Ant_222 wrote:
Yoong: do you think the following sentence is incorrect? Â«In 2002, Stricklin struggled mightily and was soon released. That was the last time he has driven a NASCAR race.Â»

The 3 chief uses of pp:

1 state present perfect

used with stative verb senses to refer to a state that began in the past and extends to the present and perhaps even further.

I have been learning English for four years.

2 the event present perfect

event(s) happened in a period leading up tho the present.
two subclasses:

a) recently happened

I have got a new pair of Nike air max 360 shoes.

b) some indefinite time in the past:

Have you seen my new shoes? (until this moment in the present?)
The implicit time frame leads up to the present

3 habitual pp

dynamic verb sense, events, happening many times, in the past and in the present.

I have been bed-ridden for four days

----------------------------------------------

"In 2002, Stricklin struggled mightily and was soon released. That was the last time he has driven a NASCAR race"

correct, provided there are chances he will race again -- 2b category

It has been a while since I first/last wrote anything here -- while = the period of time that has passed since the last/first writing --

It has been a while since I have been writing -- while = period of time in which I have put in posts in this forum.

Re: present perfect "HAVE"

Inchoateknowledge — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 13:44:29 GMT

You certainly have a knack for languages given the fact you only have been learning English for a mere year.

Have does not carry meaning in perfect tenses; it is just a grammatical auxiliary verb.

Re: Present perfect tense question

Goodman — Sat, 25 Mar 2006 00:07:44 GMT

Umâ¦.Where do I begin? Well, I am almost sure one or two of you on this forum may have already heard the story before. As Iâd said many time before, learning English is much harder for Asians than Europeans for the simple fact that Asian langauges are not made up of alphabets, except Vietnamese. For Asian born Chinese, the movement of their tongue and jaw has been trained into the muscles from speaking their native dialects. Itâs difficult to re-train them to move in the ways English speaking demands them of moving which in turn causes pronunciation problems for them.

So for a young immigrant who never learned the basics of English, it would seem extremely impossile to learn this language, as least for a period about 2 years. I was 17 when I arrived Calif. But not until 2 years later that I really seriously spent a lot of time studying. The way I learned English is not what you would call academic. In fact, I donât have a college degree because I had to work right away to survive. I couldnât go to regular high school for I wonât understand anyway. My existence for next 5 years was working in the Chinese restaurant at night and went to ESL classes during the day. After I felt confident with my English, I enrolled into a technical college to take the next step, not knowing if I could make it through. I can confortablly now tell you, if you had enough will in you, you can conquer almost anyting. Through my experience, I found out if you are humble to learn people will teach you. Through the years, Iâve kept up with this attitude of practicing what Iâd learned and refining it.

Iâd also like to shar ewith you that television, up till today, has been my best learning tool. It helped me build my speech patterns and word usage by listening and visuals. I am still trying to keep improving my written skills by emulating others writing style. Thatâs why I want to do what little I can to help others because I know how confusing, depressing and frustrating it can be to become fluent in English. To answer your question about proficiency, I would say this, I feel condifident about my English and my ability to express my thoughts clearly. Whether my English is better than native American is not really imporatant to me. Hope my story didn't bore you to tears!

Re: Present perfect tense question

Goodman — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 17:36:27 GMT

My mother tongue is Cantonese. I also learned Mardarin / Putongqua which is the official Chinese language in the Mainland at the same time I was learning English. Learning two languages at the same time really was quite a workout for my brain! I was Hong Kong born and have lived in the US for about 20 years. What else would you like to know?

Re: Present Perfect Continuous question

yunus — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 15:00:33 GMT

action have started at the past and now it is still continue.

for example i started to learn english two years ago. and now i'm still learning english then i have been learning english for two years.

then action doesn't stop, action is continue.

Re: I Want To Be Fluent English Speaker How Please?

Anonymous — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 11:22:20 GMT

Improving your motivation

Before you start reading, you should know this: Learning English requires action. You may know all the learning tips, but if you don't start doing things, you will achieve nothing. Therefore our method is not just for reading; it is for reading and doing.

You need two things to learn English well â passion and effective learning methods â and passion is the more important one. Why? Because passion makes you want to learn English; the learning methods only tell you how to do it faster.

If you love learning English:

You will do it regularly and spend more time on it.
Learning English will be easier for you. It will be easy for you to remember new words and grammar structures. It's because the brain easily remembers information on a subject that you like. (For example, some people like history and know everything about World War II. If you told a "normal person" to memorize all these facts, they would never do it.)
We know you may not love learning English. And even if you love it, you will sometimes not want to do it. This is how human psychology works â sometimes we are so lazy, bored, and tired that we don't want to do even the things that we like.

Here is what you can do when you don't feel like learning English:

Imagine yourself in the future
Imagine you can talk to native speakers just like you talk in your first language. Imagine other people wanting to speak English as well as you do. Imagine the possibility of writing e-mail to people from all over the world.

You should know that it is possible to learn English really well. Just look at other people who have done it.

Remember that you are already good
You already know some English (you're reading an article in English right now). That's a big success! Now it's time for more successes. Time to start using powerful methods of effective learning. Time to gain an impressive knowledge of English.

Remember there is a lot that you don't know
You are good, but your English probably isn't perfect. You probably can't understand English-language TV, read books in English, talk to native speakers easily, write letters without mistakes, etc.

You should never think your English is perfect. Even if you are the best student in your class, always try to find your weak areas and work on them. When you've learned to speak English well, your problems will be quite small: punctuation, rarely used grammar structures, rare words, understanding "street language". Right now, your problems are probably more basic: mistakes in pronunciation, small vocabulary, grammar problems with the present perfect tense and conditional structures.

Use your English whenever you can
This is very, very important. The more you use English, the more you will want to learn it.

Because English is so popular, you can use it everywhere. You can use Yahoo to find English-language websites with interesting information, you can watch American cartoons, you can play adventure games on your computer, you can read interesting books in English, or you can do other things that we write about.

If you do these things, you will not only have fun and learn English. If you see that a new English word lets you understand your favorite TV show (or communicate with people, or beat a computer game), you will want to learn more words. So you will learn English more, use it more, learn it more, use it more... If you also use effective learning methods, your English will grow faster than you can imagine.