Being clear about the differences between past, present and future will help you avoid mistakes. Learn how to use tenses with BBC Bitesize 3rd level English.

You use it when describing past actions, to indicate that one happened before the other. It consists of the past tense of the auxiliary verb "have," plus the past participle.

Training yourself to switch tenses as a default when you start sharing a story can take some time to make a habit, but over time it will make your stories more interesting and engaging.

By way of contrast, the ubiquity of the continuous past tense (typified by the use of the word “was”) in the manuscript I read this morning makes the reader feel as if you are a long way off ...

Jack B. Martin, How to Tell a Creek Story in Five Past Tenses, International Journal of American Linguistics, Vol. 76, No. 1 (January 2010), pp. 43-70 ...