As you may have noticed, we only have nine different tenses to learn in our book:
3 of them show or include the word PRESENT.
3 more show the word PAST.
And the remaining 3 include the word FUTURE.
It ought to be very easy: with such a classification there shouldn't be any problem. But still there are. Why? In my opinion, because there is an INTRUDER among those with the PRESENT label:
An intruder??????
Who may be????
The answer is easy: the PRESENT PERFECT SIMPLE is the intruder, or the "odd one out", since it refers itself to the past, not to the present.
So you have in fact two present tenses (simple & continuous), but 4 past tenses:
PAST SIMPLE (I arrived)
PAST CONTINUOUS (I was arriving)
PAST PERFECT SIMPLE (I had arrived) and the odd one out,
PRESENT PERFECT SIMPLE (I have arrived)
The difference between PAST PERFECT SIMPLE and PRESENT PERFECT SIMPLE is that one "talks about" a more remote past than the other: "had" refers to a remote past, whereas "have" referes to a very recent one.
Here you may see it more clearly, because of the charts:
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