Main past tenses Present Perfect Use: Past (recent) action with relevance in the present Form: Subject + have/has + past participle Example: She has finished her homework. Present Perfect Continuous Use: Past (recent) action with relevance in the present of which I want to stress the duration or just finished Form: Subject + have/has been + verb-ing Example: They have been working all day. Simple Past Use: Completed action in the past – I can find a temporal complement in my phrase Form: Subject + past verb Example: She visited Rome last summer. Used to W e use used to + base verb to show something happened regularly in the past. I used to ride my bike to school. → (I did this regularly in the past, but not anymore .) She used to live in London. → (She lived there before, but she doesn't now.) They used to be friends. → (They were friends once, but not anymore.) Structure: Positive: I used to eat cereal for breakfast. Negative: I didn’t use to...
Your personal space to explore the quirks, patterns, and hidden elegance of English.