Time for a grammar lesson! Let’s take a look at the perfect tenses.

(If you want to know a little more about the picture above watch this commercial about The Most Interesting Man in the World!)

Now back to grammar, the most interesting topic in English!

There are three “perfect tenses” in English. No, this doesn’t mean these tenses are better than all the other tenses, ‘perfect’ is just the name for the verb tense that is used to talk about actions that are already completed. The word perfect means both “as good as it can possibly be” and “made complete.”

The perfect tenses are made with the verb ‘to have’ + the past participle of another verb.

The three perfect tenses in English are: Present Perfect, Past Perfect, and Future Perfect. Here are some examples of each.

Present Perfect: I have gone to class.

When you use this tense the action is completed and done with respect to the present time.

Past Perfect: I had gone to class.

When you use this tense the action is completed and done with respect to some time in the past (i.e. yesterday or last month).

Future Perfect: I will have gone to class.

When you use this tense the action will be completed with respect to some time in the future (i.e. next week, in a year).

Now, here are some more example sentences with verbs in the perfect tense; see if you can figure out which perfect tense is being used. The answers are below.

1. I did not have any money with me because I had lost my wallet.
2. Have you read the book yet?
3. I am not going to have finished this book by 5 o’clock when the book discussion begins.
4. Jillian has not finished her homework.
5. Had Susie ever studied English before she moved to Ireland?
6. How many countries are you going to have visited by the time you go home?
7. I have been to the United States before.
8. You will have perfected your English by the time you graduate from college.

Answers:
1. Past Perfect, 2. Present Perfect, 3. Future Perfect, 4. Present Perfect, 5. Past Perfect, 6. Future Perfect, 7. Present Perfect, 8. Future Perfect