CEFR B1 · 5 min
The first night I arrived in Réunion and looked up at the sky, I said out loud — genuinely surprised, standing in the dark — ‘I have never seen so many stars.’ That sentence is the present perfect in its purest form: your whole life, up to this exact moment. Not yesterday. Not last year. Your entire existence, arriving at now.
Today's focus: Present perfect: have/has + past participle; for vs since; ever/never; just/already/yet
Use the present perfect when the past connects to NOW:
- Experience up to now: ‘I have never tried sushi.’ (ever in my life)
- Duration up to now: ‘I have lived here for three years.’ (still living)
- Recent past with present result: ‘She has just arrived.’ (she’s here now)
For vs Since: for + duration (for two years) · since + starting point (since 2019)
Compare: ‘I lived in Sydney’ (finished — past simple) vs ‘I have lived in Réunion for six months’ (ongoing — present perfect).
Examples in context
Try it — click to reveal the answer
▶ Which is correct? ‘I have lived here _____ 2019.’ (for / since)
‘For’ introduces a duration: ‘for five years.’ ‘Since’ introduces the starting point: ‘since 2019.’
▶ Choose: ‘I ___ to Japan twice.’ (went / have been)
If you added a time reference (‘I went to Japan in 2018’), you’d use past simple.
▶ ‘She has already eaten.’ What does this tell us?
‘Already’ in the present perfect emphasises that something happened sooner than expected.
Ask yourself: does the past connect to now? Yes → present perfect. No, it’s finished → past simple. ‘I lived in Sydney’ (finished). ‘I have lived in Réunion’ (ongoing).
Independent project; not affiliated with, endorsed by, or accredited by Cambridge University Press & Assessment. Confers no qualification. Cambridge CELTA course completed — 120 supervised teaching hours and four written assignments validated to the required standard.