Juan
بواسطة Juan Andres Mondalgo HuamaníI have been sick. I had been sick.
She has gone shopping. She had gone shopping.
We have done everything. We had done everything.Present and past perfect.
In this class, I'm going to teach you two of the most important,
if not the most important grammar tenses in the entire English language.
The present and the past perfect tense.Every single English speaker in the entire world uses these two tenses every single day.
So if you want to be fluent, you need to be able to both understand them
and be able to produce them, talk with them.I have been sick. I had been sick.
She has gone shopping. She had gone shopping.
We have done everything. We had done everything.
Present and past perfect.Both are in the past tense.
Both of these grammar tenses use the last form of each verb,
called the past participle.
Be, was, been. Go, went, gone. Do, did, done. Speak, spoke, spoken. Eat, ate, eaten,
or more regular verbs. Walk, walked, walked. Cook, cooked, cooked.
These two tenses only use the last form, which is the past participle form.The past tense in English can be a bit complicated
because we have several similar to Spanish.
We have the simple past, which is to say, for example, "I waited for 2 hours",
or we have the simple past continuous, which is "I was waiting for 2 hours",
which is basically the same.Then we have present perfect, which is "I have waited for 2 hours"
or continuous, "I have been waiting for 2 hours".And then ultimately, we have the past perfect:
"I had waited for 2 hours" or "I had been waiting for 2 hours".So as you can see,
the first one, the simple past,
is just one simple event in the past tense,
whereas present and past perfect are ongoing events,
things that happened in the past and continue on.The present perfect is used to refer to something that starts in the past and continues on until the present.
So there's a relationship between the past and the present.Past perfect is used to talk about something that started in the past, kept going, but then stopped in the past.
So there's no relationship with the present there.Now, that may make things a little bit clearer to you, but you still don't quite grasp it yet, do you?There's one thing that's missing here.
One thing, one tiny little thing that if you have that, it'll make you understand the differences between these two a lot easier.
Can you guess what that is? Context.There is no context around these phrases, and there is no indication of time.
We need to add context and also some emotion to these phrases so they're more comprehensible,
so they make more sense, and so they're more relatable as well, which will make you understand and learn them faster.So, for example, instead of saying, "I have waited for 2 hours",
let's add some context to that.
We could say, for example, "Dude, I'm so angry right now".
"I have been waiting for Laura for 2 hours to get ready now".
"Are Colombian girls always this late?"So that's the present perfect, right?Now, in the past perfect, for example, rather than saying "I had been waiting for 2 hours",
let's add some context to that as well.
"Dude, I was so angry yesterday".
"I had waited for Laura for 2 hours to get ready when she told me she wanted to postpone our date".It makes it a little bit easier to understand now, right?Let's do another example.
"She has gone shopping". "She had gone shopping".
Do you know the difference between these two?Well, let's add some context to the phrases and let's see.
"Hey, Patricia, do you know where Laura is?"
"Yes, Kale, she has gone shopping at the mall."The other one:
"Hey, Patricia, do you know where Laura is?"
"No, Kale. Last time we spoke, she had gone shopping at the mall."Now, does it make it a little bit easier to see the differences between these two? A little bit, right?Let's take another one.
"I have been sick" or "I had been sick".
Now, what's the difference between these two?Let's add some context to these phrases and let's see.
First one: "I have been sick for an entire week now. When will this stop?"
And the second one: "I had been sick for an entire week when I found out I had COVID."Okay.
Makes it a little bit easier now to see the differences between these two, doesn't it?So the present perfect would be "I have been sick for an entire week", meaning I am still sick right now,
whereas the past perfect would be "I had been sick for an entire week when I found out I had COVID",
so it's past related with the past.Now, let me ask you a question.
What's easier for you to understand? Is it easier if I just read you the definition, or is it easier if you see a bunch of phrases with context and charged with emotion?
It's a lot easier with the phrases, right?Here's the problem with most people teaching English.
They think that just because they explain English to you, you will learn it.A lot of students think that as well.
A lot of you guys think that you need someone like me, a professor, a tutor, or a native speaker to explain English to you in order to understand it.And that is not true. In fact, it's quite the opposite of that.Right now, I have thousands of students who, before buying my course, had bought several other English courses before where the teachers had explained English to them and still they did not understand, even after years of studying.Now, why is that? Do you think that's because these students are less intelligent or less talented or too old?Or do you think maybe it's because they didn't study too much or didn't put in enough effort?Typically, what happens is you buy some English classes from some professor online and you get super excited because they are teaching and explaining English to you in each class.But then when you go out and actually try to use what you've learned, when you try to speak, you get completely stuck.You're forced to translate in your head and mechanically structure sentences in your head. It is not automatic at all.You get super frustrated and you start thinking, "Well, is there something wrong with me? Why can't I speak? I've been studying this for a long time now. I understand it, but still I cannot talk and use it. Is there something wrong with me?"A lot of people start feeling guilty. You may even start thinking there's something wrong with you.And you might say, "Well, English is difficult for me or languages are hard for me."Does that sound familiar?Here's the problem. Every single English teacher, course, university, and platform try to teach you English with logic, with definitions, with rules, or just explaining English to you.That's a very inefficient way to learn. You actually never internalize grammar structures this way.And it just goes to show that very few people actually have real experience when it comes to learning languages.Here's the solution. Stop studying grammar. Stop taking classes where they explain English to you. Stop trying to analyze the English language.Instead, start learning like a true professional language learner.Step number one. Consume a bunch of phrases every single day in different contexts, in different grammar tenses without analyzing them, just consuming them over and over and over.If you do that 20 minutes per day, I guarantee you your English is going to change forever, because you are internalizing grammar structures and vocabulary in an intuitive way.So rather than learning English intellectually, you're learning it intuitively.And that is extremely important to be able to speak a language fluently without translating in your head.This is Laura from Argentina. She's one of my students in my English course, and she had the exact same problem.She had taken many courses in the past, but she was never able to actually learn.
She had studied the present and the past tense a lot. She thought she knew it. But then when she tried to go out and speak, she got stuck every single time, which made her very frustrated.This is her the first week in my course when she just got started.My name is Laura. I am 29. I am from Argentina. I like to read, work, go out with my friends and my dog. I have a pitbull. He's really strong and sweet.So as you can see, her English is quite basic, right? She's struggling with speaking, pronunciation, and it's obvious that she has an accent.Now, that same very day, Laura started consuming phrases every single day. And she did that for three months.When passing through my course, I gave her the phrases, taught her how to use them, taught her how to study them, and she applied it.And this is Laura just three months later.It's been three months since I've been learning with Raio. And I just can say thanks, thanks for making me feel a whole lot better on my learning process, because I have never felt that.I felt that learning English was like a burden. I tried to study English and Korean as well, but it was just only grammar and more grammar. And I couldn't speak English, and that's what I wanted.But I don't feel that with Raio.And what I found is mind blowing because I am enjoying English.Awesome, right?Isn't that fantastic?Not just is she practically 100% fluent in English. She also enjoyed getting there.It wasn't boring. She didn't have to sit through tons of boring English classes listening to teachers explaining English grammar.No, she just consumed sentences every single day.And with that method, she was able to reach this level in such a short period of time.
