English tenses !

Hi,

Does anyone have a method / technique to not confuse these 4 tenses that I can not use it properly :

All the tenses can be understood as answer to these questions:

Present perfect [What has happened?]/ present perfect continuous [What has been happening?]

Now the has and have here are not in sense of posession i.e. avoir, but in sense of completing a task.

Let's say you go to a music show.

The singer comes on stage, and starts singing. The show is not over, he is sing-ING so it is still continuous. After an hour the show is over.

Your friend asks you AFTER the concert is finished: What has happened?

You say: The singer HAS sung his songs.

Your friend asks you while IN THE MIDDLE of the concert: What has been happening?

You say: The singer HAS BEEN singing his songs. The show is not over yet

Past perfect / past perfect continuous
Past perfect and past perfect continuous are when we have HAD and not have. They mean that things happened long time ago!

It was 1942 and I had a diaper. [Past perfect]

It was 1942 and I had been eating lunch. [Past perfect continuous]

Hope this helps.

Thank you for your answers :)

English tenses!

Hi,

Does anyone have a method / technique to not confuse these 4 tenses that I cannot use properly:

Present perfect / present perfect continuous
Past perfect / past perfect continuous


Thank you for your answers :)

It's hard to explain the "continuous" tenses because they aren't really used in French, but I will try! Here are some comparisons between these English verb tenses and similar French verb tenses:
 

Present perfect in English is like passé composé in French. Par exemple:

«J'ai vu ce film.» ou «Je n'ai jamais voyagé en France.»

Present perfect continous is like using présent de l'indicatif + depuis in French. Par exemple:
«J'attends le bus depuis 30 minutes.» ou «Elle parle depuis 10 minutes.»

Past perfect in English is like pluperfect / plus-que-parfait in French. 
http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/pastperfect.htm (This page is for learning French, but it has some sentences translated between French and English so you can understand this tense.)

Past perfect continuous is like using imparfait + passé composé in French. Par exemple:

«J'attendais à la table quand elle est arrivée.»

I hope that these comparisons are helpful!
 

English tenses !

Hi,

Does anyone have a method / technique to not confuse these 4 tenses that I do not use/am not using properly:

Present perfect / present perfect continuous
Past perfect / past perfect continuous

(As a native English speaker I don't actually know what all of those are.  We don't learn English with such a focus on tenses as I think you do with French.  bon chance!)

Thank you for your answers :)

I'm going to expand on my last response in order to clarify what I meant.

«J'ai vu ce film» can be translated as "I have seen this film" (present perfect). Present perfect indicates that something happened sometime in the past. This link has more information and examples: http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/presentperfect.html

«J'attends le bus depuis 30 minutes» can be translated as "I have been waiting for the bus for 30 minutes" (present perfect continuous). Present perfect continuous indicates that something has been happening for a specific period of time, until now. This link has more information and examples: http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/presentperfectcontinuous.html

«J'attendais à la table quand elle est arrivée» can be translated as "I had been waiting at the table when she arrived" (past perfect continuous). Past perfect continuous indicates that both events happened in the past, one before the other. In the example, the duration of you waiting at the table ended when your friend arrived. In other words, your waiting was continuous until she arrived. This link has more information and examples: http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/pastperfectcontinuous.html
 

Past perfect in English is like pluperfect / plus-que-parfait in French.
This page is for learning French, but it has some sentences translated between French and English so you can understand this tense: http://french.about.com/od/grammar/a/pastperfect.htm

Does that make sense?