5-3 Unfinished Actions or States

We can use Present Perfect tenses when we want to talk about unfinished actions, states, or habits that started in the past and continue into the present. They have not finished yet.

We use Present Perfect Simple to talk about unfinished actions, states, or habits that started in the past and continue to the present. We use it to describe the duration of the action or state.

We use since for a specific start time in the past. We use for for a duration of time.

We use Present Perfect Continuous tense to also show something started in the past and has continued until now. It has not finished yet. We use past time expressions to indicate when the action started.

You can use Present Perfect Continuous tense WITHOUT a time expression by using lately or recently. With the time expressions lately or recently, the time has a more general meaning. We use lately or recently to emphasize this general meaning of time.

Although there are usually differences between using the Present Perfect Simple and the Present Perfect Continuous, sometimes is little to no difference between them:

In both examples, the actions started from the past and continue into the present. Some common verbs used like this are play, work, live, and teach.

However, you must be careful with stative verbs. They are rarely used in Present Perfect Continuous form. Stative verbs are verbs that you cannot see someone doing physically. For stative verbs, we use Present Perfect Simple form instead.

Here is a list of common stative verbs:

Now complete the exercises and come back to the lesson.