4A Grammar Continuous and perfect tenses

• I can use continuous and perfect tenses.

Habits: can you change them?

Which of the habits in the photos do you think are good or bad? Say why. How easy do you think it is to change a habit? Say why.

Listen and write down four pieces of advice Khalil gives Issa about how to develop better habits.

Continuous tenses: happening now, then, or later

Which tenses show an action in progress, or one finished before another time?

• We use the Present Continuous to talk about:
• actions in progress at the time of speaking: Ali is having a shower right now.
• temporary situations in progress now: I’m playing a lot of football.
• changes and developments: We’re becoming tired of the boy’s lies.

• We use the Past Continuous to talk about:
• actions or activities in progress at a specific time in the past: This time last year I was painting my bedroom.
• longer actions interrupted by a shorter past action: She was doing an online personality quiz when her boss walked into the room.

• We use the Future Continuous:
• to predict something in progress at a point in the future: Six months from now we’ll be studying in different cities.
• to talk about something that is expected to happen: You’ll all be coming back here in one year’s time.
• to ask politely about someone’s plans: Will you be coming to the meeting after the show?

Perfect tenses: done before a point in time

• We use the Present Perfect Simple to talk about:
• completed past actions that happened at an unspecified time: I’ve visited many European cities in my life.
• recent actions with a present relevance/result: We’ve recently discovered a fabulous new restaurant. Let’s go there tomorrow.
• states or actions that began in the past and continue up to now: She’s been a translator for a few years.
• recent actions where we focus on the result, not the activity: Adnan’s published a book about horses.

• We use the Past Perfect Simple to describe:
• actions or states that happened before a specific past time: It was strange because she’d bought lots of apples the night before and when she entered the kitchen there was only one.
• a clear sequence of events. We use the Past Perfect for the earlier action: As soon as I’d heard the news, I went round to their house.

• Example: Next time I see you, you will have completely changed your eating habits!

• We use the Present Perfect Continuous to focus on the continuity of:
• actions that began in the past and continue to the present: They’ve been running for more than an hour.
• recent actions where we focus on the activity, not the result: I’ve been sending off job applications.

• Example: I had been keeping quiet about my running, and then I won the race.

• Example: By the end of this month we’ll have been writing this book for two years.

Will can also mean must

• Will can be used like must to make deductions.

Spot the tenses in real speech

Now see these tenses in a real conversation, then match sentences to meanings.

What tenses are used in the underlined parts? Explain why.

• Match the sentences with meanings a or b.

I will have been working.

Practice: fill in the right form

Complete the texts with the correct continuous or perfect forms of the verbs from the box.

I was almost late for school, and I 1 _ up later and later. I would set my alarm, but fall asleep again straight after it 2 _ .

I’m not exactly strong-willed. But now I 3 ___ it much easier to get up.

Next week I 4 ___ my house on time every day for a month!

I 5 _ way too much time on social media. One day I realised that I 6 _ my account more than 50 times that day!

I 7 ___ deleting my account altogether, but that seemed a bit extreme, so I decided that I would always log out of the app.

Just having to fill in the password every time makes it enough of a pain that I can’t be bothered to keep logging in and I 8 ___ the number of times I check it to maybe once or twice a day.