Jake has watched TV every night this week (recently and repeatedly).
Why we use present perfect simple instead of present perfect continuous in this example? Isn't it incorrect?
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2 Answers
Jake watched TV every night this week.
Jake has watched TV every night this week.
Jake has been watching TV every night this week.
None of these are incorrect.
The first expresses a past-tense action. The second expresses a present-tense state which results from an action. The third expresses a present-tense state which results from an action that has a duration.
We haven't even covered every possibility yet. We might also wish to consider:
Jake was watching TV every night this week.
This expresses a past-tense action that had a duration.
None of these are incorrect, but none of these are equivalent. They do express different things. They do have different implications.
Jake watched TV every night this week.
Jake has watched TV every night this week.
To my native-reader's eye, these two don't imply anything about the future. Perhaps Jake will continue this habit. Perhaps he won't. I don't see a reason in the grammar to infer either possibility.
Jake has been watching TV every night this week.
This combination of present tense and continuous aspect implies that the action will continue. I suspect that Jake will watch TV every night next week. That is to say, he probably hasn't finished watching TV.
Jake was watching TV every night this week.
Jake had been watching TV every night this week.
These combinations of past tense and continuous aspect implies that the action has ended. Without further context, I suspect that Jake won't watch TV every night next week.
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According to my English book which is "Sollutions upper-Intermediate" it says we can't use present perfect continuous in this sentence because if we specify the exact number of occasions, we cannot use the continuous form, ex: wrong: we've been arguing TWICE THIS WEEK. right: we've argued twice this week. So i think in this sentence: Jake has watched TV EVERY NIGHT THIS WEEK is the only correct form of Present Perfect. And we got "every night this week" so he'll continue watching the Tv until the end of the week Commented Aug 20, 2020 at 15:24
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That seems a strange thing for it to say. I wonder what those authors would make of "Jake has been watching TV two or three times every night this week." The "every night" doesn't specify an exact number of occasions, and having an exact number so far doesn't tell us anything about whether some episodic action is going to continue. Commented Aug 20, 2020 at 15:57
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English is so confusing (°∆°"). I've just asked my teacher about that problem and he said we can only use the present perfect simple for that sentence :( im so lost Commented Aug 20, 2020 at 16:07
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If we're looking at fill-in-the-blank questions, we might prefer to choose "has watched" over "has been watching" because the additional semantics of the continuous aspect are not required to make the finished sentence sensible. Then again, the semantics of the perfect aspect aren't required, either. A simple "watched" is fine for the past tense, and a present continuous "is watching" also looks like a viable choice. Perhaps your teacher can explain why the present tense seems relevant to what may well be nothing more than a past-tense action. Perhaps the question involves more context? Commented Aug 20, 2020 at 16:16
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Well but it's not a fill-in-the-blank question. I actually asked him that would it be incorrect if we used present perfect continuous and he said it'd obviously be wrong. :'( Commented Aug 20, 2020 at 16:32
English is so confusing (°∆°"). I've just asked my teacher about that problem and he said we can only use the present perfect simple for that sentence