Choosing between past simple and present perfect in a short email
A B1 learner writes a 90-word email to a supplier. His draft contains these sentences: 'I have sent you the order last Friday.' 'We didn't receive the confirmation yet.' 'Since two years we work with your company.' 'The last delivery was late, so we have decided to change the schedule.' He uses past simple and present perfect almost interchangeably. When you ask him to explain the difference, he says: 'Present perfect is for things that are finished, past simple is for older things.' He also omits the article in 'we have problem with the invoice' and writes 'informations' twice. He is otherwise fluent and his message is fully understandable. The exam rewards accurate use of tenses and articles in a transactional email of 80–100 words.
1. Diagnose the underlying rule the learner is using and explain why it generates these four errors.
Read the worked answer
He has an incorrect rule, not a missing one: he believes present perfect marks completion and past simple marks distance in time. That single wrong mapping predicts every error.
- 'I have sent you the order last Friday' - a finished action with a definite past time ('last Friday') requires past simple. Because he thinks present perfect = finished, he reaches for it here.
- 'We didn't receive the confirmation yet' - 'yet' with a present relevance requires present perfect ('haven't received'). Because he thinks past simple = older events, he uses it for something still unresolved.
- 'Since two years we work with your company' - 'since' plus a duration needs present perfect ('we have worked with your company for two years'). He has no rule linking present perfect to unfinished duration at all.
- 'The last delivery was late, so we have decided to change the schedule' - this one is defensible in context (a recent decision with present result), so it is not the clearest error; the first three are diagnostic.
The fix is to replace his rule with a time-based one: present perfect for unfinished time or present result; past simple for finished time with a definite past marker. He also needs separate, small fixes for countable/uncountable ('information' is uncountable) and the missing article in 'a problem'. Keep these as two short correction strands so tense work is not diluted.
2. Write a short correction activity using his own sentences and state how you would judge whether the rule has been internalised.
Read the worked answer
Activity - timeline sort. Give him his four sentences cut into strips plus two correct versions of each. He sorts them onto a timeline marked 'finished time (past simple)' and 'unfinished / present result (present perfect)', and must say the time marker that justifies each placement ('last Friday' → finished; 'yet' → unfinished). Then he rewrites the three faulty sentences and explains each choice in one clause.
Judging internalisation. A single corrected email proves little, because he may be copying. Look for three signs:
- He supplies the reason unprompted ('last Friday is finished, so past simple'), not just the right form.
- He applies the rule to new sentences he has not seen, including a 'since/for' duration and a 'yet' sentence.
- The rule holds under time pressure - in a five-minute free-write about a recent order, tense choice stays accurate without prompting.
If he corrects the email but still says 'since two years we work', the rule has been patched, not replaced, and the timeline sort should be repeated with fresh examples before moving on. Treat the article and 'information' errors as a separate checklist he proofreads for at the end, so they do not compete with the tense focus.