Vivo o he vivido en México? El uso del presente simple para comunicar acciones que iniciaron en el pasado y que tienen relación con el presente

Abstract

As Mexicans teaching English as a foreign language, we are aware of our students’ problems in using the present perfect in English. We attribute these problems to a transfer of Spanish to English, as there is a tendency in Mexico to replace the present perfect tense by the present simple. We conducted an exploratory study to find out whether the simple present is substituted for the present perfect in Spanish, thus affecting linguistic production in our students when they use the present perfect in English.