Present Perfect - Part 01

"He's worked here for ages."

This week's post is a wee bit of grammar to get you all excited over the weekend - the Present Perfect! Woohoo! Hang on to your hats!
This is just part 1 of what will be three thrilling lessons which look at the different ways we use the Present Perfect (or don't if you're American).

I taught in Berlin for a couple of years and basically just taught the Present Perfect all day, every day. It was as if the entire tense had been invented just to frustrate and annoy German speakers, for whom no grammatical equivalent exists. The school had a large collection of audio cassettes (yes, cutting edge technology I know) and I soon realised that in Germany it was generally unecessary to rewind or forward the various tapes to the place you required as they tended to already be at the correct unit - because the unit was always the Present Perfect, and whoever had last used the cassettes... well they had of course also only been teaching the Present Perfect etc etc.

Years before that, in Spain, I had a one-to-one student, a bank manager who wore a camel hair coat over his shoulders like a mafia don, tell me that the Present Perfect was stupid and unnecessary. I have often thought about that since then (ooh look! "I have often thought..."!) and it always makes me smile. So Señor Venegas, this one's for you!

There is also a worksheet which you can download for free here It has lots of extra exercises (and answers):
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B1LCyaQkPPAhRUhzMDJ1ak14ZmM

If you want to do me a favour in return you can also go and "Like" my Facebook page here:
https://www.facebook.com/londonenglishclasses1?ref=hl
(I'm not sure why, I'm still waiting to find out the reason, but apparently it's important.)

Part 2 coming soon!