Past simple or Past Perfect
In this sentence
'Our teacher worked in a school in Africa for two years before she joined our school.'
why 'Our teacher worked...', not 'Our teacher has worked...'
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Corrections · 4
1
Past simple or Past Perfect
In this sentence'Our teacher worked in a school in Africa for two years before she joined our school.'
why 'Our teacher worked...', not 'Our teacher has worked...'
In this case, you need to say, "our teacher worked" (or, more likely, "our teacher taught"). The reason is that the teacher no longer teaches at a school in Africa. He/she worked there for two years, and then stopped working there. That job is completely in the past.
However, imagine this same person is an excellent teacher and a friend of yours, and you want him/her to be hired by your school. In that case, you could try to persuade the head of your school to hire him/her by saying, "This teacher has taught in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Therefore, he/she has experience teaching students coming from a variety of native languages. He/she would be great addition to our school, since we have many students from those parts of the world." In this case, you can say "has taught" because you want to make it clear that this person continues to work as a teacher.
I hope that helped a bit. Best wishes!
0
Thank you! I got it!)
'for two years' has confused me! Because, as I know, it's more often used with present perfect or pp continuos.
But in this sentence we have situations that started and finished in the past.
So 'worked' is correct!
0
Perhaps someone else will come along and give an exact grammar rule, but I can say the following:
'Our teacher worked ...' leaves one asking for more details in the same sentence. i.e. how long, where, why, etc.
'Our teacher has worked ...' is more of a general statement that the teacher worked for some unknown time (see I just used the previous from because I am describing how long -> some time).
Perhaps some more examples:
Where has your teacher worked? Our teacher has worked in Africa.
How long did your teacher work in Africa? Our teacher worked in Africa for 5 years.
I hope that helps.
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