Verbs-Perfect tenses

• Present Perfect Tense

  ✓ expresses an action that began in the past and is now completed in the present.

  Present tense of have + past participle = present perfect tense

  Example - I have finished my homework already.

  present perfect phrase = have finished

  In this sentence, have finished tells us that the finishing action began in the past but is now completed in the present. We can see that the sentence used have instead of had, so we know it’s present perfect tense, not past perfect.
• Past Perfect

  ✓ expresses an action that began in the past and was completed in the past before something else occurred.

  Past tense of had + past participle = past perfect tense

  Example - Paul tried to hide the vase because he had broken it.

  past perfect phrase = had broken. There’s our past tense had and our past participle.

  The sentence is describing something that began in the past and was completed before something else occurred. Paul broke the vase. The action is complete, therefore the tense is perfect, and it happened in the past, therefore the word had appears in our equation.
• Future Perfect


  Expresses an action that will be completed by some specified point in the future
• Future Perfect


  Talking about an action that's not done yet, but will be done in the future at a specific time
• Future Perfect Tense


  Will or shall + have + past participle
• Future Perfect Tense


  • Do you think the lunchroom will have cooked enough rice?
  • By the end of the night, Mary will have danced for three hours.
  • In two years, I will have saved $2,000.
• In both these examples, the reader is standing in the present without evidence of a completed action, but we can be sure that both of those things will be done in the future, thus the past participles danced and saved.