I’ve been trying to film this video all day but it keeps going wrong!
What does that mean? Does it mean have you been trying to film
but you’ve given up? Does it mean that I’ve now finished filming?
Today we’re talking about the present perfect continuous tense, which we use to talk about
an activity that is ongoing. But how does it work?
The present perfect continuous tense is created using 4 words in the correct
order at the beginning of a sentence. I have been playing the piano all morning.
First of all, we have the subject, so in this case: “I”.
Then, we use “have” or “has” depending on the subject.
Next, is the word “been”. This is the part that shows
the activity is ongoing and it doesn’t change no matter what the subject or the verb is.
And finally, we have the main verb, with an “ing” ending.
“I have been playing” And then you can finish off
the sentence, including details of the activity and how long it has been going on for, usually
by adding the subject and then a time phrase. “I have been playing the piano all morning.”
Here's a pro tip: if you want to sound more like a native speaker, you can get a little bit lazy.
We’ll often use a contraction of the subject and “has/have”, which means we shorten it to one word.
I have becomes “I’ve”. You have becomes “you’ve”. They have becomes
“they’ve”. He has becomes “he’s”. She has becomes “she’s”. Anna has becomes “Anna’s”.
Anna’s been teaching English all morning.
Now let’s talk about those time phrases. What’s the difference between the word “for”
and the word “since”? This is a very common mistake with non-native English
speakers so let’s go through it carefully. The word “for” is used when you are talking about
an amount of time. For example, “She practiced the dance for 2 hours” or
“I’ve been at the bus stop for half an hour”. The word “since” is used when you want to say the
start time. For example, “I’ve been here since 6 o’clock” or “I’ve lived in this house since
2011”. If you want to be less specific, you could say “for a while”. “I’ve been thinking about it
for a while”. This usually means for quite a long time, but not a specific amount of time.
If you want to say that you have not been doing something for a long time, without being too specific,
you could say “for a little while”. Person 1: Sorry I’m late!
Have you been waiting long? Person 2: Only a little while.
Another time phrase you can use is “all” and then a longer time period. For example, “I’ve
been here all week” or “I’ve been trying to call you all month”. Again, this comes from native
speakers being lazy. It means “for all of the”, so rather than saying “I’ve been trying to find you
for all of the day”, a native speaker would simply say “I’ve been trying to find you all day”.
So now I’m going to say 5 sentences, leaving a space for the word “for” or “since”.
I’ll pause for a few seconds between each one to let you think about your answer.
Ok, are we ready? Number one
“I’ve been playing tennis ____ last year.”
The answer is since. I’ve been playing tennis since last year.
“He’s been talking about it ___ weeks!” The answer is “for”. He’s been
talking about it for weeks.
Next question, number three “They’ve been driving ____ hours.”
The answer is “for”. They’ve been driving for hours.
“I’ve been dancing _____ I was 6 years old.”
The answer is “since”. I’ve been dancing since I was 6 years old.
And the final question...
“She’s been annoying me ____ all morning.”
I'm sorry. That was a trick question! We don’t use ‘for’ or ‘since’ when we say “all morning”, so the full sentence is: She’s been annoying me all morning!
What was your score out of 5? Let me know in the comments section below
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