Perfect tenses

Present perfect: has / have + past participle

Shows an action that happened at an unspecified time before now or that has just finished.

• I have finished my homework.
• She has visited Mombasa twice.
• They have eaten lunch.

Use has with he, she, it and singular nouns; have with I, you, we, they.

Past perfect: had + past participle

Shows an action that was finished before another past action.

• The bus had left when we arrived at the stage.
• Mum had cooked before the visitors came.

Past participles

Regular verbs add -ed: play, played. Irregular verbs change:

• go, went, gone
• eat, ate, eaten
• write, wrote, written
• take, took, taken
• see, saw, seen