Let’s take a look at the two most common past tenses in English: the present perfect tense and the simple past tense.
As you can see, the present perfect tense is formed with the verb to have and the past participle of the main verb, in this case, spoken. The simple past tense is just the past form of the verb, which in this case is spoke. These tenses are used a bit differently.
The present perfect tense expresses an event that happened in the past when the exact time is not known, or when there’s a result or a connection being made to the present, or when the time reference is still unfinished, as in so far this week, or up to now, or during my entire life.
The simple past tense, on the other hand, expresses an action that happened when a specific finished time is given, such as yesterday or last week or in 1995. Sometimes these tenses are
interchangeable, depending on what the speaker wishes to emphasize. Here are a few examples.
