Faculdade de Ciências de Educação

Curso de Licenciatura em Ensino de Português

THE PRESENT PROGRESSIVE OR PAST PERFECT SIMPLE

Nome do aluno: Código do estudante

Localidade, mês e ano.

1
 Faculdade de Ciências de Educação
Curso de Licenciatura em Ensino de Português

THE PRESENT PROGRESSIVE OR PAST PERFECT SIMPLE

Trabalho de Campo a ser

submetido na Coordenação do
Curso de Licenciatura em Ensino
de História da UnISCED.
Tutor: dr. Celito Avelino Cussaia
Escova Ribeiro

Nome do aluno: Código do estudante

Localidade, mês e ano.

2
Table of Contents
Introduction............................................................................................................................4

1. THE PRESENT PROGRESSIVE OR PAST PERFECT SIMPLE.........................5

1.1. The present progressive.......................................................................................5

1.2. Uses of the Present Progressive.........................................................................5

2. The past perfect simple................................................................................................6

Conclusion...........................................................................................................................10

References..........................................................................................................................11

3iii
Introduction

In today’s global world, the importance of English cannot be denied and ignored
since English is the greatest common language spoken universally. To learn
English requires constant practice and patience. The kind of feeling that succeeds
among students is that it is not possible to achieve fluency or mastery over the
English language.

Knowledge of English is necessary if one wants to come up in life. It is the major

window of the modern world. This is all the truer where the advanced countries
have opened their doors for recruiting technically qualified persons. Only those
who have a command over the English language are given a job.

In line to this thinking, the main objective of the present work is to describe the
present progressive and the past perfect tense in general. A descriptive
methodology has been employed for the materialization of this work. In other
words, literature review has been used for the production of the work and, all the
references used in this work, have been acknowledged at the end.

Specific objectives

1. Define the present progressive tense;

2. Define the past perfect tense;
3. Talk about their use and structure and present as many examples as
possible.

4
 1. THE PRESENT PROGRESSIVE OR PAST PERFECT SIMPLE
1.1. The present progressive

The present progressive tense (also called present continuous tense) is the verb
form of the present tense that expresses actions happening now, actions that are
in progress, or actions that will occur in the near future (Brown, 2016, p. 15).

Examples
 I am swimming. (happening now)
 I am reading an excellent book. (in progress)
 I am going to the park on Saturday. (near future)

1.2. Uses of the Present Progressive

Vince and Emmerson (2003, p. 16), say the present progressive (continuous)
tense can be used to express a few different situations. Here are the most common
ways to use this verb form with diagrams to illustrate their meaning.

The present progressive is used to express:

i. Actions happening now

These actions are occurring at the moment of speech. For example,

 I am watching television.
 You are frustrating me.
 He is finishing his homework.
ii. Actions in progress
These actions are in progress but are not necessarily happening at the moment of
speech. These are oftentimes longer actions that can take place over days, weeks,
or months, so in the above graph, you can see the time frame is lengthened.

5
Examples
 My dad is working on a solution to fix the leak.
 They are trying to solve the problem.
 I am training for a marathon.

iii. Actions that will occur in the near future

These actions will happen soon. They also use “going” as the present participle
and are followed by a prepositional phrase.

Examples

 She is going to the party this weekend.

 We are going on vacation this summer.
 They are going out for drinks later.

2. The past perfect simple

According to Vince and Emmerson (2003, p. 18), we use the past perfect simple to
talk about what happened before a point in the past. It looks back from a point in
the past to further in the past. It is formed with the auxiliary verb "had" + past
participle (-ed ending for regular verbs, e.g., worked, travelled, tried, different forms
for irregular verbs, e.g., written, made, sung).

Examples

 I hadn't known the bad news when I spoke to him.

6
  I checked with the supplier and they still hadn't received the contract.
 She had already told him before I got a chance to give him my version.
 The company has started the year well but was badly hit by the postal strike.

The past perfect simple is often used when we report what people had
said/thought/believed.

Examples

 He told me they had already paid the bill.

 He said he believed that John had moved to Italy.
 I thought we had already decided on a name for this product.
It is also used to refer to an activity that was completed before a point of time in the
past.
Examples
 In 2005 I had lived in the same place for ten years.
 Had you ever travelled by plane before your holiday in Pemba?

The past perfect is often used with expressions indicating that the activity took
some time, such as: for 10 years, since 1995, all week, all the time, always, ...

Examples

 When the plane landed Tim had travelled all day.

 My parents moved away from Leeds. They had lived there since they got
married.
 In 2005 Derek started to work in Berlin. He had always planned it.

These expressions are also used with the present perfect. The difference is,
however, that the present perfect refers to events that started in the past and still
continue, the past perfect expresses events that began before a point of time (or
another action) in the past and continued to that point of time in the past. (Azar,
2002, p.56).
7
Examples
 I have been in Paris for a week.
(The present perfect - I came a week ago and I am still in Paris.)

 When I met Annie I had been in Paris for a week.

(The past perfect - I came to Paris a week before I met Annie and I am not there
anymore.)

Azar (2002, p. 57), if the Past Perfect action did occur at a specific time, the Simple
Past can be used instead of the Past Perfect when "before" or "after" is used in the
sentence. The words "before" and "after" actually tell you what happens first, so
the Past Perfect is optional. For this reason, both sentences below are correct.

Examples:
 She had visited her Japanese relatives once in 1993 before she moved in
with them in 1996.
 She visited her Japanese relatives once in 1993 before she moved in with
them in 1996.
If the Past Perfect is not referring to an action at a specific time, Past Perfect is not
optional. Compare the examples below. Here Past Perfect is referring to a lack of
experience rather than an action at a specific time. For this reason, Simple Past
cannot be used. (Azar 2002, p. 59).
Examples:
 She never saw a bear before she moved to Alaska. Not Correct
 She had never seen a bear before she moved to Alaska. Correct

If we use the past perfect simple it does not always mean that an activity continued
up to a point of time in the past. The event can end a long time before the point of
time in the past that we refer to.
8
Example
 In 2001 Angie worked in Glasgow. In 1980's she had worked in Wales.
(Angie left her job in Wales in 1989. In 2001 she worked in Glasgow. But we do not
know what she did in the meantime.)

Brown (2016, p. 20), affirms that in time clauses after when we can use either the
past tense or the past perfect tense. The past perfect is used when we want to
make it clear that the first action was completed before the second started and that
there is no relation between them.

Examples
 When she had washed the dishes, she had a cup of tea.
But:
 When she washed the dishes, she put the plates in the cupboard.
If we use after in a time clause the past perfect is much more usual.
Example
 After Zidane had scored the goal the fans went wild.

9
Conclusion

the use of English is very much needed because of the importance of using
English in everyday life, starting from education, business, to technology. If the
learning uses an effective method, the output of using English will also produce
useful soft skills ranging from the ability to write, speak, listen, and read soft skills
like these are very much needed in the world of work. So, making effort to learn the
English verb tenses is very important, as it is there where everything start.

Although learning English can be challenging and time-consuming, we can see that
it is also very valuable to learn and can create many opportunities. Therefore, this
shows how important the use of English nowadays.

10
References

AZAR, Betty, Schrampfer. (2002). Understanding and using English Grammar. 4th
edition, Pearson Education. New York.

BROWN, Pearson. (2016). English Grammar Secrets. 1st edition, Macmillan

Education, UK.

VINCE, Michael. and EMMERSON, Paul. (2003). English Grammar and

Vocabulary. 4th edition. Language Practice. Macmillan, New York.

11