IELTS Grammar - The Present Perfect - IELTS with Mark Teacher

Using the Present Perfect in IELTS Speaking

In Part 1 of the IELTS Speaking test, there often questions about your preferences. In other words, things you like or dislike.

For example:

Do you like cooking?
Do you prefer cold weather or hot weather?
Do you enjoy watching sports?

The answers to these questions can also be very simple.

Do you enjoy watching sports? – “Yes I do. I like watching football and golf on TV.”
Do you like cooking? – “Not really. I’m not very good at it and eating out is very affordable in my country.”

These answers are fine. But if you want to extend your answer and share more of your English ability (and improve your IELTS Speaking score) you can try sharing some experience to support your opinion.

In other words, how do you know that you like something? How do you know that you dislike something?

The ideal grammar tense to use is the Present Perfect.

The Present Perfect tense is ideal because we can explain many different experiences over a long period of time all in 1 sentence.

In the case of your IELTS Speaking exam, “a long period of time” can be your whole life, or at different points of your life.

We also need the Present Perfect because these experiences still affect your opinion now. The examiner understands that these experience will continue to affect your opinion in the future, too. The Present Perfect is unfinished.

How to use the Present Perfect tense

Here is the Present Perfect grammar structure:

Subject + have/has + 3rd form verb (PP)

Use this grammar structure when you explain one or many experiences from your life. For example:

I have visited many different countries
I have watched lots of history documentaries
I have been to lots of football matches
I have taken lots of flights
I have tried to learn a few foreign languages

This will show the experience you have with the topic and help the examiner understand why you have your opinion.

To take this idea to an even higher-band level, you can add the following:

How many times you have done it (this doesn’t have to be an exact number)
Your opinion or the outcome of these experiences – make it clear if they have been good or bad experiences.

Look at this clip from my IELTS Speaking System video course below for some examples of this advanced structure:

Now let’s use this approach to improve the answers you saw at the beginning of this post.

Do you enjoy watching sports?

“Yes I do. I like watching football and golf on TV. I have been a football fan + for as long as I can remember + and it’s definitely my favourite sport.”

Do you like cooking?

“Not really. I’m not very good at it and eating out is very affordable in my country. I have tried to cook at home + a few times + but I always mess up the recipe and it doesn’t taste good.”

Here are a few more examples from IELTS Speaking System video course:

Did you know?

This grammar tip is just 1 out of more than 100 others in my IELTS Speaking System Video Course.

In the full course, you can learn more grammar and language structures just like this one to improve your IELTS Speaking answers, thanks to examples, exercises and more than 120 in-depth video explanations.

Click the link below to find out more about the course. Plus – you can use the discount code: “MT10” for a discount!