The document compares and contrasts the simple past and present perfect continuous tenses in English. The simple past is used to talk about completed actions fully in the past, often within a past time context like "yesterday" or "last year." The present perfect continuous emphasizes the duration of an action that began in the past and either continues in the present or just recently finished. It is formed using the present tense of the verb "to have" and the present participle of the main verb.