Have your students already studied these time markers?
When we use the present perfect tense to describe a finished action at an unspecified time in the past, there are three common adverbs that serve as time markers. These adverbs can be tough for students to remember because they follow different sentence patterns. Presenting them all at once allows students to see and understand the differences.
Already is the easiest of the three time markers because this adverb follows a normal adverb sentence pattern.
|Meaning:||Already emphasizes that an action has been accomplished in the past.|
|Pattern:||have/has + already + past participle|
Yet has an unusual sentence pattern and always includes a negative verb.
|Meaning:||Yet signifies the intention to do something.|
|Pattern:||have/has + not + past participle + (object) + yet|
|*Note:||Not yet is pretty common as a short answer.|
Still can be tricky for students because there are two separate uses of this term. It is helpful to point out that with the present perfect tense, the verb must be negative, and with the present progressive, the verb is usually positive.
1. Present Perfect
|Meaning:||Like yet, still signifies the intention to do something.|
|Pattern:||still + have/has + not + past participle|
2. Present Progressive
|Meaning:||Still emphasizes an ongoing action.|
|Pattern:||be + still + -ing verb|
Are your students still having trouble with these time markers? Try our related materials:
- Present Perfect Grammar Lesson
- Present Perfect Progressive Grammar Lesson
- 5 Easy Steps for Teaching the Present Perfect and the Present Perfect Progressive
- Still, No Longer & Not Anymore
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