⚖️ Grammar B2-5: Present perfect simple vs continuous

At B1 the present perfect continuous arrived as the tense that points at the activity rather than the score. This material assumes all of that and goes after the part B1 could not afford: the places where both forms are grammatical and the choice is about what the sentence is for. It opens on Kirsten, an architect who spent Tuesday on one drawing and can say two true things about it at six o’clock — I’ve revised the roof plan hands over a finished thing, I’ve been revising the roof plan hands over a day — and a dual timeline that lays the continuous’s dashed stretch above the simple’s single standing result. After a two-minute form check with both shapes side by side, including the been-plus-participle passive that is neither of them, the lesson is organised as four axes, each with its own compare-and-verdict pair. Axis one is result against activity: what the listener walks away with. Axis two is count against duration, the most mechanical rule on the page — eleven versions, twelve emails, the third time, the best so far all force the simple, because you cannot count unfinished things. Axis three is permanent against temporary, and it is deliberately honest: with live, work, stay, teach and study plus for or since, both forms are correct and the continuous merely tints the arrangement provisional, so several items argue from tone rather than rules and say so. Axis four is evidence against announcement — you’ve been running, read off a pink face, against I’ve run a marathon, delivered as news. A state-verb gate runs before all four, because own, know, belong and contain refuse -ing whatever the period. Three worked runs include a single sentence that legitimately takes both tenses in its two clauses. A 128-word catch-up between two architects outside a building site carries thirteen tappable choices, and practice runs to forty-one explained multiple-choice items in five sets, twelve fragments to sort by score-focus and time-focus, six real B2 errors to repair, and four traps. Teacher notes give a 45-minute sequence, a two-column board move, the number test and the evidence test as rescues, and Cambridge B2 First relevance.