Present perfect continuous

INTRODUCTION
I hope you found time to go over our previous lessons. Practice makes perfect so its important that you do the exercises I give you and keep practising. The topic for today’s lesson is the present perfect continuous tense, this tense tells us about what is going on right now or at this particular point in time. the present perfect continuous tense is formed by putting together:

the auxiliary verb has or have +been and the present participle or the continuous form of the verb. for example:

these sentences may remind you of the present continuous tense, which tells us about what is going on at the moment.
 * you have been reading
 * we have not been reading
 * what have you been doing
 * we have been eating
 * have you really been eatingt?

Lesson Content
The Present Perfect Continous Tense indicates an action which was started some time in the past and continues to the present. Here are a few sentences we are going to change into the present perfect continuous tense.


 * i am listening to the radio.
 * they are going to school.
 * the teacher is teaching english.

in the present perfect continuous tense we would say:


 * 1) i have been listening to the radio.
 * 2) they have been going to school.
 * 3) the teacher has been teaching english.

remember that the present participle is made up of a verb + the ending “ing”. invariably if you add “ing” to a verb then the action is ongoing.

take a look at these:


 * talk + ing =talking
 * go  + ing = going
 * sleep + ing = sleeping
 * rain + ing = raining
 * clean + ing = cleaning.

therefore if we want to describe a repeated or continuous action which has been going on for some time and has not yet ended, we use the present perfect continuous tense. here are some other examples:


 * the teacher has been teaching here for 2 months.
 * Ami has been fasting since friday.
 * it has been raining since this morning.

REMEMBER THE PRESENT PARTICIPLE IS MADE UP OF THE BASIC FORM OF A VERB + ING.

TO HELP YOU UNDERSTAND LET US HAVE A LOOK AT THIS CONVERSATION BETWEEN KOFI AND AMA. the first statement means that Ama has CONTINUOUSLY been fetching water for the whole morning. again, Kofi’s statement indicates that he has been learning how to weave over a period of time. are you following the discussion so far? well lets go on.
 * 1) ama says, ‘i have been fetching water all morning.’
 * 2) kofi says, ‘i have been learning how to weave.’
 * 1) kofi says, ‘i have been learning how to weave.’
 * 1) auntie akua says, ‘i can see you have been fetching water. similarly antie aku’s statement indicates that from what she has seen she believes  Ama has been fetching water for some time.

you will see that all the verbs are in the present prefect continuous tense.

learning fetching weaving the sentences show that the activities described by the verb have been going on for some time and have not yet ended. write these expressions down.


 * reading a book.
 * ploughing the land.
 * been cooking.
 * crying
 * sitting tests.

the important difference between the two is that, the present continuous tense describes an action going on now, whereas the present perfect continuous shows that the action started earlier and is still going on.

We shall look at your answers in the next lesson. we shall learn more about the present perfect continuous tense when we meet again. meanwhile try and get all the sentences correct. you can easily do that, can’t you? good bye!

Abibata031 16:56, 27 February 2007 (CET)