Where is the speaker standing?
Six sentences about the same job. Match each to where the speaker is standing when they say it.
One story, three positions
The shop
My aunt has run the shop since 1998. She has never taken more than four days off at a time, and she has been saying she will sell it for at least a decade.
When my uncle died in 2016 she had already been running it alone for two years, because he had stopped coming in long before anybody said the word illness. By the time the will was read she had made every decision that mattered.
She turns seventy in September. By then she will have had the shop for twenty-seven years, and by the following March she will have been working seven days a week for thirty of them. She has agreed — twice, out loud, to me — that this is enough.
I do not believe her, and neither does she. But something has changed this year, and I notice that she has started giving things away.
Four questions.
1. She has run the shop since 1998. Where is the speaker standing?
2. She had already been running it alone for two years. Standing where?
3. By then she will have had the shop for twenty-seven years. Standing where?
4. What is the same in all three of those sentences?
The three perfects, side by side
One system
| Where you stand | Form | Example | Vantage words |
|---|---|---|---|
| Now | have / has + participle | She has run it since 1998. | since, for, already, yet, so far, up to now, ever, never |
| A point in the past | had + participle | She had run it alone for two years. | by then, by the time, before that, already |
| A point in the future | will have + participle | By then she will have had it 27 years. | by then, by June, by the time, before |
And the continuous versions — still running up to that point
| Where you stand | Form | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Now | have been + -ing | She has been saying it for a decade. |
| A past point | had been + -ing | She had been running it alone since 2014. |
| A future point | will have been + -ing | By March she will have been working seven days a week for thirty years. |
One word does the anchoring in all three. By.
By now she has decided. By then she had decided. By March she will have decided. Same preposition, three positions, one instruction: stand here and look back.
If you can put by in front of a time and the sentence still makes sense, a perfect is probably the tense you want.
Five questions.
1. When I arrived, she ___ already.
2. I ___ three emails about it so far this morning.
3. By the time you read this, I ___.
4. She ___ here for six years when the company was sold.
5. Which sentence has no vantage point set at all, and is therefore a plain past?
Moving between the three
Two to five words per gap. Read the vantage phrase in each sentence before you choose.
My aunt the shop since 1998. When my uncle died she it alone for two years. By the time the will was read she every decision that mattered. She turns seventy in September, and by then she it for twenty-seven years. By next March she seven days a week for three decades. She twice this year that it is enough.
Eight sentences. Seven contain an error; one is correct.
1. When I arrived she has already left.
2. By next June I am here for ten years.
3. I have seen him yesterday.
4. By the time we will get there, it will have closed.
5. She had been working there for six years when it closed. — correct as written
6. By then he will have been left.
7. I have been knowing her since school.
8. By 2016 she had ran it alone for two years.
One event, three positions
Task card · Speaking · Pairs · 5 minutes each
Choose one thing that has been going on in your life for a while — a job, a course, a place you live, a habit, a relationship with a city.
Five minutes. Tell it three times, from three positions, in this order.
- From now: I have been… since / for… — what is still true, and what has changed so far.
- From a past point: choose a moment — a day, an arrival, a decision — and say what had already happened by then.
- From a future point: choose a date and say what you will have done, and what you will have been doing, by then.
- Listener: after each of the three, say in one sentence where the speaker was standing. If you cannot, the vantage phrase was missing.
The listener’s sentence is the assessment. Not whether the tense was right — whether the position was clear. In practice the two turn out to be the same question, which is the argument this lesson is making.
Which position was hardest
Two questions.
1. Which of the three was hardest to hold?
2. When your listener could not place you, what was missing?
Three tenses, one idea
Two questions. Twenty seconds.
1. What do the three perfects have in common?
2. Which word anchors all three?
Next. Twenty-six minutes on your own life in both directions, to somebody whose job is to ask where you are standing.