30 mins. English tenses. The present perfect continuous is used to refer to an unspecified time between 'before now' and 'now'. The speaker is thinking about something that started but perhaps did not finish in that period of time. Perfect English Grammar. Also called the present perfect progressive. Read about how to make the present perfect continuous tense here. Download this explanation in PDF here. Unfinished actions. 1: To say how long for unfinished actions which started in the past and continue to the present. Rule: Subject + Helping verb +form of verb 1 with "ing" + object. I have been studying English for two hours. Subject: I. Auxiliary verb: have. Been. Base form of the verb: study. -ing: studying. Formula: Examples: He has been eating the food for 15 minutes. He has been searching me since morning. He has been inviting us for three days. The present perfect continuous mostly puts emphasis on the duration or the period that an act / action has been continuing over. It is used in a sentence to imply that an action which had started in the recent past continues into the present. Consequently, from the past to the current time, there is a progression taking place. What is the present perfect continuous tense? The present perfect continuous tense is generally used to describe actions or conditions that began in the past but are still going on or have recently stopped. In particular, there are several situations in which we must use the present perfect continuous tense to communicate specific meanings: Perfect English Grammar. Also called the present perfect progressive. Click here to download this explanation as a pdf. Learn about USING the present perfect continuous here. How to form the present perfect continuous. Rule 1: To form the present perfect continuous tense, we use the structure have/has + been + verb in the -ing form. Here is an overview of how to conjugate the present perfect continuous in positive, negative and interrogative sentences: How do we use the Present Perfect Continuous tense? This tense is called the Present Perfect Continuous tense. There is usually a connection with the present or now. We use the Present Perfect Continuous to talk about: past action recently-stopped; past action still-continuing; Present Perfect Continuous for past action just stopped 8tB2k8T.