Perfect Tense

1. Introduction.

This is a small game to practice perfect tenses in English. It is intended to be used by ESL learners to review and reinforce the usage of the perfect tense.

The game is divided into 3 parts. In the first part, you have to match simple verb forms with their perfect conjugations. The purpose of this section is to review verb forms before starting to make sentences and also to remind/reinforce the idea that the perfect tense uses different verb forms. In the second part, you have to look at the picture and click on the words to make a complete sentence correctly - for example, She has eaten lunch. The aim here is to practice making sentences correctly and to test students on word order and grammar problems. In the third part, you have to look at the picture and click on one of the 3 sentences. The 3 sentences here have only slight differences and the purpose is for students to practice recognizing the correct grammar for the perfect tense.

The sentences used in this game are arranged into 4 sets of content. They are grouped according to different uses of the perfect tense. The first volume covers the basic use of the perfect tense to describe things you did at an unspecified time. Example: She has eaten lunch. Some life experiences are also included in this set, such as seen an elephant and graduated from college. The purpose of this set is to cover all the basic verbs and try to find phrases that people can hear in everyday life, such as done homework or passed the test. This set also differs between singular and plural and between positive and negative. The purpose of this is to expose students to all the different forms that basic perfect phrases can use.

The second set of phrases related to life experiences - answers have you ever abc? questions. A contrast is created between sentences that say how many times something has been done and sentences that say something has never been done. This is important because the sentence order is different for the never phrases. The goal here is to expose learners to life-experience phrases like these. I tried to use common everyday phrases like - for example, had an injection or failed the test. But usually these sentences are of an unusual nature, such as eaten a spider.

The third group is related to duration and how long you have done something. This is one of the main uses of the perfect - to describe an action that you continue to do from the past to the present, for example: lived in Viet Nam. The important issue with these sentences is whether they are used with 'for' or 'since'. If there is a specific time mentioned at which the action begins, since is used. While, if you only have one period - for example 5 years, then for is used. This distinction is quite important and so it is important for students to practice with these contrasting sentences.

The last involves phrases related to the words just, ready, and yet. These signs represent slightly different meanings for the perfect tense and so it is quite helpful to compare them. Phrases with yet are used for situations in which an action has not taken place, but is likely to do so in the future - for example, the store hasn't opened yet. The phrase 'Just' is used to describe events that have occurred recently with evidence to suggest. For example, he has just washed the car with the car showing clean and visible water and soap. Similarly, the phrase already describes events that have taken place. I have chosen to use already for situations where there is evidence in the present. This means that there is a lot of overlap between the terms just and already, but the options available for students to click on will avoid any confusion. The purpose of this content is to practice creating phrases using these words, with a particular focus on correct word order. I really think that practicing phrases like this is very helpful for learners.

The images used in this game are quite specific in nature. The problem with creating an image for the finished tense is a rather difficult task to represent visually. For something like 'he is flying a kite', it's pretty easy to perform - you just show a boy flying a kite and it directly matches the meaning; however, for something like, he has already flown a kite, the meaning is more subtle and difficult to show with the eye. The solution used in this game is to separate actions from people. For example, in the sentence she has eaten lunch, the act of eating lunch is shown in a scene and then the person the sentence refers to is seen next to the scene, with a thumb up to signal it was done. this action. I think this is a good solution because I think this is almost the same way of understanding the meaning. In the perfect tense, the action is not actually performed by a person, rather it exists as a concept they relate to, so I think it makes sense to separate it this way.

The game gives points for each correct answer and points for incorrect clicks. The maximum possible score is 23000.

I hope you guys find this game useful. Email me with any feedback - use the contact form linked below or leave a message.

2. Theory

+ Learn present perfect tense

+ Learn the past perfect

+ Learn the future perfect tense

3. Practice

+ Topic 1: Present perfect tense 1

+ Topic 2: Present perfect tense 2

+ Topic 3: Present perfect tense 3

+ Topic 4: Past perfect tense 1

+ Topic 5: Past perfect tense 2