• 1 TRY OUT LANGUAGE

• 2 LEARN GRAMMAR

• 3 APPLY ON YOUR OWN

Use Verbs in the Present Perfect Tense

• • If you know when an action happened in the past, use a past tense verb.

  EXAMPLE

  I helped last week.

• • If you’re not sure when a past action happened, use a verb in the present perfect tense.

  EXAMPLE

  Volunteers have helped people in the past.

• • You can also use the present perfect tense to show that an action began in the past and may still be happening now.

  EXAMPLES	Mrs. Park and other volunteers have served many meals to the homeless. (And they are probably still serving meals.)
  	Mrs. Park has served meals at the soup kitchen every Saturday. (And she is probably still serving meals on Saturdays.)

• • To form the present perfect, use the helping verb have or has plus the past participle of the main verb. For regular verbs, the past participle ends in -ed.

  Verb	Past Tense	Past Participle
  help	helped	helped
  serve	served	served
  try	tried	tried

Practice Together

Say each sentence. Choose the correct form of the verb.

• 1. Last year, Mr. Lopez (opened/has opened) a soup kitchen.

• 2. He (tried/has tried) opening a soup kitchen in our neighborhood for a long time.

• 3. People in the community (wanted/have wanted) to help the homeless for a while.

Try It!

Say each sentence. Write the correct form of the verb on a card. Then say the sentence with the correct verb.

• 4. Many teens (babysat/have babysat) at neighbors’ homes before.

• 5. Alexis (agreed/has agreed) to babysit one day a week.

• 6. She always (enjoyed/has enjoyed) the chance to help others.

The chef has cooked many meals at the soup kitchen.