Welcome to this English grammar lesson about the present perfect continuous tense (also called the present perfect progressive). This is another very common English verb tense, and it is helpful to know it when you want to talk about things that started in the past, and are still happening now.
Once you master the conjugation and usage, you'll be able to use it in sentences like, "I have been waiting for the bus for two hours!" You'll notice in this sentence we're talking about something that started in the past, and is still happening now.
I'll start by helping you learn how to conjugate in the present perfect continuous for written and spoken English. This verb conjugation is made up of the subject, the verb "to have" conjugated, the word been, and then the -ing form of the verb. I'll also make sure I help you learn how to use it in the negative, and how to form questions with the present perfect continuous.
I hope you enjoy this English grammar lesson about the present perfect continuous tense! I hope you're having a great day!
Note: This is the audio portion of a Youtube English lesson which you can watch right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttr7DowBUBk or find by searching Youtube for, "Bob the Canadian Present Perfect Continuous"
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Hello there. I've been running for 10 minutes. Whew. Ha, now I'm out of breath because I've been running.
Well, hello and welcome to this English lesson where I'm going to help you learn the English verb conjugation that we call the present perfect continuous. This is a verb conjugation that we use when we want to talk about something that started in the past and is still happening now, or something that started in the past and is connected to something that is still happening now. We use it in sentences like this. I could say, "I've been teaching for over 20 years." I could say, "I've been making YouTube videos "for over four years." So it's a tense that we use to talk about something that started in the past and it's still continuing now. Before we get started on the rest of the lesson, though, if this is your first time here don't forget to click that red Subscribe button over there and give me a thumbs up if this video helps you learn just a little bit more English. And if you're wondering why I have my sunglasses on, I've been wearing sunglasses lately because it's very bright outside when it's sunny and when there's snow on the ground.
Let's start by learning how to conjugate the present perfect continuous. You do this by taking your subjects, I, you, he, she, we, and they, and the first thing you do is you conjugate the verb to have. So you have I have, you have, he/she has, that's the only one that's different, by the way, and then we have, and they have. And then you add been. You don't have to conjugate it, you just add it. It's the same for every one. So, I have been, you have been, he/she has been, we have been, or they have been. And then you add your verb with an I-N-G ending. So you could have sentences like this, "I have been reading. "You have been reading. "He has been reading. "She has been reading. "We have been reading. "They have been reading." So, I apologize for the English language once again. I don't know why we have to have so many verbs just to communicate something that we want to say, but this is how you conjugate the present perfect continuous.
An interesting thing to note is that we say bin. When we are speaking quickly, we don't say been. In fact, it's very rare to hear someone say something like, "I have been reading." It sounds funny to my ear because when we speak quickly, the word been actually is pronounced bin. So people will say things like, "I have bin reading."
As you know with English, we don't always like saying the whole word so we actually use contractions almost all the time when we're using the present perfect continuous. We don't normally say things like, "I have been eating a lot of pizza lately." Instead we say things like this, "I've been eating a lot of pizza lately," or, "You've been eating a lot of pizza lately," or, "He's been eating a lot of pizza lately. "We've been eating a lot of pizza lately," or, "They've been eating a lot of pizza lately." As with most languages, when we speak English we like to speak quickly and sometimes we use contractions in order to communicate what we want to say.
Let's talk a little bit about when to use the present perfect continuous. There are three situations where you can use this verb conjugation when you're speaking English.
The first situation is when you talk about something that started in the past and is still happening right now. If I was to say, "I've been waiting for the bus for two hours," I'm talking about something that started in the past and it's still happening right now. You can also use the present perfect continuous to talk about something that started in the past and that regularly keeps happening. I could say, "Because of the pandemic, "I've been working from home." So I'm not working from home right now but it's something that's going to regularly keep happening. So, the first situation where you can use the present perfect continuous is to talk about something that started in the past, that is still happening now, or will regularly keep happening.
The second situation where you can use the present perfect continuous is with the words lately and recently. I could say something like this, "There's a lot of snow behind me "because it's been snowing a lot lately." So I'm talking about something that happened in the past but there's a chance it might keep happening. I could also say this, "Because it is winter and I'm inside more, "I've been reading a lot more recently." So you can see how when you use the words lately and recently, it's kind of an indicator that you can use the present perfect continuous in the sentence that you are using.
The third situation where you can use the present perfect continuous is to give a reason for a statement. And I kind of did this in the second example when I was talking about the snow, but here are a couple more sentences. You could say this, "I know more English vocabulary now "because I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos." You could say, "I'm ready to take my test "because I've been studying all morning." So you can use the present perfect continuous to kind of give a reason for a statement that you've made. So if you look at the two sentences over there, you can see that I made a statement, and then I used the present perfect continuous as a reason why that statement is true.
Let's talk a little bit about how to use the negative with the present perfect continuous. That's when you say things like this, "I have not been exercising lately." You'll notice that I inserted the word not between the conjugation of to have and the word been. So you end up saying things like this, "I have not been exercising lately. "I have not been walking lately. "I have not been eating healthy food lately." All of that's not true, though. I have actually done all those things but are just examples of how to use the present perfect continuous in the negative.
We should also talk about how to form questions using the present perfect continuous. You do this using this format, "Have you been exercising lately? "Have you been eating healthy food lately? "Have you been walking every day?" You'll notice that the sentence becomes kind of inverted when we put it into a question form. We start with the verb to have, and then we say things like, "Have you been?" So the verb to have, then the subject, then been, and then the verb with I-N-G. So, "Have you been driving the speed limit lately? "Have you been running every day?" That's how you form questions using the present perfect continuous.
Hey, thanks for watching this little English lesson on the verb conjugation called the present perfect continuous. It's so awesome that all of you are learning English with me. If you're new here, don't forget to click that red Subscribe button over there, and give me a thumbs up if this video helped you learn just a little bit more English. And if you have the time, why don't you stick around and watch another English lesson.