Present Perfect Activities – Practice for Experiences, Unfinished Time & Present Connection

These present perfect activities cover different uses of the tense: talking about life experiences, recently completed actions, and past events with present relevance. They work well for upper A2 to B2 level learners and are easily adapted for classroom or online teaching.

Present Perfect – Past Participles

Present perfect crossword

Use a present perfect crossword puzzle to reinforce common past participles. You can download ready-made ones or make your own using PuzzleFast. See our ESL Crosswords page for more examples and tips.

50 top verb cards

Give each pair or group a set of Top 50 Verb Cards. Ask them to write what they think the past participle is on the back of each card.

• Check their answers as they work.
• If a form is incorrect, put a line through it and have them try again.
• Once complete, students take turns drawing cards and making present perfect sentences:

I’ve eaten sushi.
She’s broken her phone.

Let them turn the card over if they’re unsure of the form. Great for form recall and fluency.

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Present Perfect – Unfinished Time & Life Experience

How Long Have You…?

Students begin with yes/no questions:

Do you have a dog?

If the answer is yes, they follow up with:

How long have you had it?

Encourage for / since usage:

I’ve had it for five years.
I’ve had it since I was a child.

Have you … this week?

Divide the board into two and write finished-time at the top of one section and unfinished-time at the top of the other.  Read out the finished and unfinished time phrases and have students tell you which side of the board to write them. You can add further examples to each side.

Elicit examples of questions which can be asked for each side, i.e., past simple and present perfect.

Give pairs of learners a set of unfinished-time phrases. They should take it in turns to take a card and then ask their partner a present perfect question which they think will elicit a positive answer. For example, today: have you cleaned your teeth today?

In the following class repeat the exercise but with the finished-time phrases added to the deck thus forcing learners to switch tenses depending on the phrase.

Stand up if you’ve ever/never …

One of my favourite games to play, this activity encourages students to talk about their life experiences and often reveals interesting stories.

Before you play, you can use this handout as a more controlled practice and refresh activity.

The aim of the game is to be the only person standing by sharing life experiences and inviting other students to stand if they’ve also had the same experience.

First, demonstrate the game using some examples from your own life. For example:

• Stand up if you’ve ever flown in a helicopter.
• Stand up if you’ve ever been to Disneyland
• Stand up if you’ve never eaten a hamburger

If you manage to be the only person standing for one of your examples, you would get a point.

Now, give the learners five to ten minutes to think of three experiences from their own lives which they can use in the game.

Write the name or initials of each student on the board in a line on the board. This is where you will keep track of the points total for each player.

The first player makes their first stand up if… statement and gets to their feet. If they are the only student standing they get a point. Mark the point on the board under their name and move on to the next player.

Go round the class two or three times and make sure to encourage questions about some of the stories as you uncover them.

The winner is the student with the most points under their name at the end.

Talking About Trends – Present Perfect for Change Over Time

Draw four basic trend lines on the board: rising, falling, fluctuating, and steady.

As a class, brainstorm phrases:

have gone up, have increased, have fallen, have stayed the same

Apply the language to your town or city:

Rent prices have gone up.
The number of tourists has dropped.
Scooter use has increased.

You could also ask about: the cost of living, number of tourists, number of students, pollution, amount of cars / bicycles / scooters.

Now, ask them to think of examples from their own lives and write four or five sentences. Make sure to go over the correct usage of for & since before they start writing.

Find someone who…

A classic mingling activity to practise life experience questions in the present perfect. Students move around the classroom asking:

Have you ever broken a bone?
Have you ever ridden a horse?

They record names on a worksheet and follow up with questions when they find a match.

See the Find Someone Who post for more information and printable activity sheets.

Conversation cards

After reviewing Present Perfect for life experiences. We have two sets of fun conversation cards from our conversation questions section.

• Life history
• Have you ever?

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Present Perfect – Connection to the Present

Just / Already / Yet

Use mini-scenarios to elicit sentences:

Dave started a new job.
He’s already made friends.
He hasn’t met his boss yet.
He’s just learned to use the coffee machine.

Possible scenarios:

• Dave has a new job
• Bill and Angela got married last month
• Patrice moved into her new home last week
• We moved to England last year

Present perfect problems

Give students this list of work problems. Students complete the problems using the present perfect form and must explain what the connection to the present is and talk about possible solutions.

Present Perfect Picture Sets

Students view a slideshow of present perfect pictures and offer explanations as to what has (just) happened in each photo.

In another set students have to identify what has changed between two photos.

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Grammar translation

I find that translation activities can be quite useful if you have a class of monolingual speakers.

As a grammar activity, I write down some sentences in the students’ native language that would logically, usually be translated into the target form I am aiming for. Then I get the students to attempt to translate the sentences into English.

Here are ten sentences I use for Present Perfect.

How long have you known John?

I’ve been here for five years.

I’ve never seen Game of Thrones.

I haven’t eaten yet.

Have you ever been to India?

Have you sent the documents to Tom?

Nobody has seen Jennifer for weeks.

Her English has improved since she moved to Scotland.

I think I’ve already seen this episode.

It hasn’t stopped raining for three days.

For example, here is a German present perfect grammar-translation activity.

Teaching Online

You can find online present perfect exercises and activities at our online-focused site LearnHip.com.