Present perfect activity for finished / unfinished time

This is a downloadable ESL activity to practise expressions of time with the present perfect and past simple.

Present perfect activity

Download this activity for free!

Here’s some more info about the activity:

Language point Present perfect and past simple tenses
Aim To practise the use of expressions of time with the present perfect and past simple.
Activity Students organize expressions of time into categories.
Organisation Pair work
Preparation Make enough copies of the worksheet for the number of students in your class.

What do I do?
  1. Hand out the worksheet.
  2. In pairs, students organise the expressions of time into two groups, according to whether they are finished or unfinished time.
  3. Feedback as a class, and review the difference between the use of finished time with past simple and unfinished time with present perfect.
  4. Challenge students to make sentences about themselves using the expressions. Tell them that they must make two sentences which are true, and two which are false.
  5. Divide students into small groups. Student A in each group chooses one sentence and reads it aloud. The rest of the group decide whether it is true or false.
  6. Continue until students have read out all their sentences.

FINISHED TIME / UNFINISHED TIME?
this week
this millennium
10 years ago
6 days ago
this year
when I was a child
this month
when I was younger
yesterday
last year
in my life
in 1996
in October
today
2 weeks ago
last July
last winter
this morning

Download this activity for free!

Author picture

Share this post:

Add a comment