What is 

present perfect tense?

We use verbs, to put it simply, to refer to actions or states of being. In English,
we use a variety of different verb tenses in sentences. Generally speaking, the
tense of a verb tells you about when in time something happened. Today, we
will look at the present perfect tense. The present perfect tense may strike
some as a bit of a misnomer, because it doesn’t seem to be referring to
the present at all at first glance. You can see this in the following sentence
that uses the present perfect tense:
 I have gone to the store three times today.
This sentence describes an action that happened in the past, as it says that I
have made three trips to the store prior to the current moment when I am
saying this sentence. At first look, this sentence seems to suggest that the
present perfect tense does the same job as the simple past tense: I went to
the store three times today. While simple past and present perfect can
sometimes be effectively used interchangeably to get the same meanings (as
with our inefficient trips to the store example), there can be slight but
important differences in these two verb tenses. Look at the following two
sentences:
 Simple past tense: She owned two Dalmatians for 10 years.
 Present perfect tense: She has owned two Dalmatians for 10 years.
Do you notice the difference? The first sentence states that she owned
Dalmatians for a period of 10 years in the past but she doesn’t own them now.
The action is finished and completed. The second sentence, however, implies
that she still owns these dogs now. The action is still happening in the
present. That is the key difference between these two similar verb tenses.

We have a simple explanation for all your questions about the simple
past tense, right here.
When do you use present perfect tense?
One of the main reasons we use the present perfect tense is to indicate that a
state or action that happened or started in the past has some connection to
the present and future. Typically, we use the present perfect tense to indicate
something happened in the past but continues to occur. For example:

 I have waited for two hours. (I started waiting two hours ago and I am
still waiting now.)
 They have lived here all their lives. (They started living here a long time
ago and still live here now.)
The present perfect tense can also connect present events to those that
happened in the past. For example, the sentence Josh is acting as our tour
guide through Boston because he has been here before says that Josh
traveled to Boston sometime in the past. This sentence also implies that we
are all in Boston right now because it also uses the present continuous tense.
Often, we are faced with the tough decision of whether we should use the
present perfect tense or the simple past tense in a sentence. If a past action
has no connection to the present, it may be more appropriate to use the
simple past tense:

 I have lost my wallet! (You recently lost your wallet in the past and you
really want to find it right now.)
 I lost my wallet. (You lost your wallet in the past but it has no impact on
the current time. You either found it or it remained lost forever and you
gave up looking for it.)
That said, in everyday speech, both utterances do effectively mean the same
thing. Thanks, grammar.

Notably, we don’t use the present perfect tense when we talk about specific
times or time periods that began and completely ended in the past:

 Incorrect: I have cleaned the house at 9 am this morning.

 Correct: I cleaned the house at 9 am this morning.

 Incorrect: He has studied Spanish last year.

 Correct: He studied Spanish last year.

How to form present perfect tense

In order to form the present perfect tense, we use the
word have or has followed by the past participle of the verb. For regular verbs,
the past participle is a form of the verb that ends in -ed, -d, or -t. For example,
the past participle of cook is cooked and so the present perfect tense would
be have/has cooked. Some verbs use a –t variant in the past participle and
end in a –t rather than -ed. For example, the past participle
of bend is bent and the past participle of sleep is slept.
Has and have make a lot of difference in English grammar. See what else
they have going on here.
Keep in mind, though, that there are many irregular verbs that don’t follow this
general rule. Here are the past participles of just a few irregular verbs:

 go → gone
 fly → flown
 catch → caught
 be → been
 rise → risen
 ride → ridden
 break → broken
We use the word have in the present perfect tense except when the subject is
in the third person singular, in which case we use the word has. For example:
 I have worked as a lifeguard before.
 The cats have eaten twice already.
 She has given me lots of good advice.
 I think Brian has seen my house once before.
When using the present perfect tense, we can also shorten our sentences
with contractions:

 I’ve worked as a lifeguard before.

 They’ve eaten twice already.
 She’s given me lots of good advice.
 I think he’s seen my house once before.
How to make present perfect tense negative
To make the present perfect tense negative, all you need to do is put the
word not after have/has. The contractions haven’t and hasn’t can also be
used. Here are examples of sentences that use the present perfect tense in
the negative:
 I have not talked to Ashley yet.
 I haven’t talked to Ashley yet.
 Vince has not finished his sandwich.
 Vince hasn’t finished his sandwich.
 We haven’t met the new neighbor.
 We have not met the new neighbor.
 Our teacher has not graded our exams yet.
 Our teacher hasn’t graded our exams yet.