Five Circled Forms in a Home-Stay Blog Post
A third-year student, Haruka, is writing a 60-word blog post for the school website about her first month in a home stay in Miyagi. The teacher returns the draft with five parts circled and a note: 'The meaning is right; the form is wrong. Choose, then explain the rule in one line.' The circled parts are:
(a) I (have come / came) here on 2 August. (b) My host sister is (very / much) kind to me. (c) There are only (a few / a little) students from my country at this school. (d) I am looking forward to (meet / meeting) your family next week. (e) Yesterday my host family (has taken / took) me to a summer festival.
Haruka's instinct: for (a) she wants 'have come' because she is still here; for (e) she wants 'has taken' because the festival feels recent. The deadline is Thursday, and the teacher's rule is that a form is correct only if the time expression and the verb agree.
1. Choose for (a) and (e), and explain what the time expression decides in each case.
Read the worked answer
(a) came. 'On 2 August' names a finished point in the past, so the simple past is required. Haruka's instinct is half right - she is still here - but present perfect cannot carry a past time word. If she wants to show 'still here', the time expression must change, not just the verb: I have been here since 2 August.
(e) took. 'Yesterday' is a finished past time, so has taken is impossible. 'It feels recent' is a feeling, not grammar; recency is not what present perfect means.
The one-line rule the teacher wants: present perfect links a past action to now and refuses finished past time words (yesterday, last week, on 2 August, in 2020). Test it by asking 'is there a time word that closes the door on the past?' If yes, use the simple past.
2. Choose for (b), (c) and (d), and give the one-line rule for each.
Read the worked answer
(b) very kind. Very modifies a plain adjective (very kind); much modifies a comparative (much kinder) and, in this pattern, does not sit before a base adjective.
(c) a few students. Students is a countable plural, so it takes a few. A little goes with uncountable nouns (a little time, a little money). Note the pair, not the word alone: few/little without a also changes the meaning to 'not enough', which is not what Haruka means.
(d) meeting. Here to is not the infinitive marker; it belongs to the phrasal verb look forward to, where to is a preposition. A preposition is followed by a noun or an -ing form, so meeting.
Diagnostic that works on all three: ask what job the word is doing in this sentence, not what it usually does.
3. Haruka also writes 'I have been here for three weeks' and 'I have been here since 2 August.' Are both correct? Explain using start point and length of time.
Read the worked answer
Both are correct, and on 23 August they describe the same period.
- for + length of time (three weeks, two years, ten minutes)
- since + starting point (2 August, last Monday, 2021, I was ten)
Check the arithmetic: 2 August to 23 August is three weeks, so the two sentences agree. If the second sentence said since three weeks, or the first said for 2 August, the pair would collapse.
Watch one more thing: since can also introduce a clause - since I came to Miyagi - and that clause is past simple even though the main verb is present perfect. Students who learn 'since + past' as a single rule often write since I have come, which is wrong.