TEACHING THE PRESENT PERFECT TENSES.

THE SIMPLE PRESENT PERFECT and the PRESENT PERFECT CONTINUOUS are for the non-native speaker of English two of the most troublesome tenses in the English verb system. They are sometimes confused with a present tense and sometimes with a past. One often hears a nonnative speaker of English use a simple present where he should use a simple present perfect (* I AM HERE FOR THREE DAYS instead of I HAVE BEEN HERE FOR THREE DAYS), a present continuous where he should use a present perfect continuous (* I AM STUDYING ENGLISH FOR THREE YEARS instead of I HAVE BEEN STUDYING ENGLISH FOR THREE YEARS), or a simple present perfect where he should use a simple past (*I HAVE ARRIVED FIVE MINUTES AGO instead of I ARRIVED FIVE MINUTES AGO). Sometimes this is just a careless mistake, but more often it is a substitution which the speaker regularly makes. In making this substitution, he is in all likelihood transferring a structure from his native language into English, and he is making this transference because he lacks an understanding of the nature of the English present perfect tenses. He is not aware that these two tenses are neither wholly present