Unlocking the English Tenses Lesson 7: Present Perfect Progressive

Welcome back, language learners!

In this week's installment of our Unlocking the English Tenses course, we'll be looking at the Present Perfect Progressive (continuous)

The Present Perfect Progressive describes a situation that is ongoing. Another way to understand it is something that started in the past and continues up to now.

For example, everyone reading this post could use the tense to describe how long they have been learning English (you all started in the past and continue to learn up to now)

Structure

Subject + have/has been + ing

I have been waiting for 20 minutes

You have been waiting for 20 minutes

He has been waiting for 20 minutes

She has been waiting for 20 minutes

It has been waiting for 20 minutes

John has been waiting for 20 minutes

We have been waiting for 20 minutes

They been waiting for 20 minutes

You been waiting for 20 minutes

Uses

1. To describe an ongoing situation/scenario

"I have been living in this flat for 3 years and I love it."

2. To describe a situation which has just ended

"What is all that stuff on your shirt?"

"I've been cooking and I got some sauce on me."

Time words that can be used with present perfect progressive

1. Since

"I've been living here since 2018."

1. For

"Jane has been running her company for quite a while now."

Common errors

Some verbs in English are stative, which means they do not commonly take the "ing" form.

For example, love, hate, and like would sound very strange in present perfect progressive, and that applies to all progressive tenses.

The sentences are incorrect in present perfect progressive:

"I have been liking chocolate all my life." (incorrect)

"I have always liked chocolate." (correct)

"I have been hating cauliflower since I was little." (incorrect)

"I have always hated cauliflower." (correct)

Practice

As an exercise, try to connect these two sentences using the present perfect simple:

1. I started working at this company 3 years ago. I still work here.
2. Martina trains gymnastics. She started when she was 5.
3. Ryan runs marathons. He started a year ago.

We hope this lesson was helpful to you, and that you'll join us next week when we will have a look at the present simple tense. Happy learning!

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