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Often there is very little difference between the present perfect simple and the present perfect continuous. In many cases, both are equally acceptable. They’ve been working here for a long time but Andy has worked here for even longer.  I’ve lived here for 10 years and she has been living here for 12 years. To…

This tense is used to talk about an action or actions that started in the past and continued until recently or that continue into the future: We can use it to refer to an action that has finished but you can still see evidence. Oh, the kitchen is a mess. Who has been cooking?  You…

(Remember that British and American English have different rules for the use of the present perfect. The comments and the exercises here refer to correct grammar for British English. In American English, it is often considered acceptable to use the past simple in some of these examples.) The past simple is used to talk about actions…

We use the past perfect simple to talk about what happened before a point in the past. It looks back from a point in the past to further in the past. I hadn’t known the bad news when I spoke to him. I checked with the supplier and they still hadn’t received the contract. She…

We use the past perfect continuous to look back at a situation in progress. It was a good time to invest. Inflation had been falling for several months.  Before I changed jobs, I had been working on a plan to reduce production costs. We had been thinking about buying a new house but then we…

We can use the past simple to talk about actions and states which we see as completed in the past. I left school when I was sixteen. I was very happy then. He told me all about his childhood. We can use the past continuous to talk about past events which went on for a period of time. While…