Since or For? Present Perfect and Continuous Explained [10]

Hi there and welcome back. This is Harry and we are in our podcast again giving you some help in relation to English language for those of you at or around the intermediate level. As always, I'm going to read a sentence for you twice and then explain the main grammatical points in that particular sentence. So the sentence for you today is, we have lived in this house since I was a small child. Okay, the second reading, we have lived in this house since I was a small child.

The important grammatical structure here is at the beginning of the sentence, we have lived. And here we're using the present perfect. We have lived. Lived is the past participle of the verb to live. And we have lived is the way we form present perfect. We could also, in fact, here use present perfect continuous because it will mean exactly the same. So we could say, we have been living in this house since I was a small child.

We have been living in this house since I was a small child because we have been living suggests continuity. Okay, so we're using the ing living. Or we have lived is the present perfect, something that started in the past when you were a small child and brings you right up to the future. Okay, so both of these are grammatically correct. We have lived or we have been living. We have been living or we have lived in this house. Okay, so this is possessive.

It's our house, the house of the family in this house, since. And the word since we are using because we're stipulating or telling people that it started from a time back in history, since I was a small child. So whether you were three or four or five, okay, and it brings you right up to the present. Okay, instead of since, you could also use the word for, F-O-R, but then you change the sentence and say, we have lived in this house for five years or ten years or twenty years.

Okay, so when you use for, you give a specific number or amount of years. And when you use the word since, it's from when something started back in history. Okay, so once again, the sentence, we have lived in this house since I was a small child. Last point here is that we're using the word child because it's the singular of a small person, boy or girl. It's an irregular noun. And when we use the plural, we use children. But here, you're talking about yourself. So since I was a small child.

Okay, so examples in there of the present perfect and also this joining word since. Okay, so that's the recording for today. And as always, if you wish to contact me directly, you will find me on my website, www.englishlessonviaskype.com. Okay, we'll join us again soon and we'll give you some more insight into that wonderful English language.