Describing past experiences

This lesson focuses on how to describe past experiences naturally in English. You'll learn common idiomatic expressions, strategies to organize a short story about something that happened, and how to choose the right tone for professional and casual situations.

• Use natural expressions to introduce experiences (e.g., 'I once', 'I had the chance to')
• Choose the appropriate tense and connectors to show sequence (past simple, past perfect, time markers)
• Adjust tone and detail for business vs. casual contexts

When you describe past experiences, match the expression and tense to the purpose of your story:

• Use present perfect (I've been to) for life experiences without specific time.
• Use past simple (I went) when you mention a specific time (last year, yesterday).
• Use expressions (I had the chance to, It was my first time) to add emphasis or tone.
• Use past perfect (I had finished) only when you need to show an event before another past event.

Be consistent with time markers: specific times → past simple; general experiences → present perfect

When describing past experiences, learners often make these universal errors:

• Mixing tenses inside a short story (switching between past simple and present perfect without reason).
• Using present perfect with a specific past time (e.g., 'I've been to London last year' is incorrect).
• Overusing vague verbs (e.g., always saying 'went' instead of using more precise verbs like 'attended', 'presented', 'organized').
• Lack of sequence markers, which makes the story confusing (use 'before', 'after', 'then', 'later').
• Incorrect verb patterns after expressions (e.g., wrong gerund/infinitive after 'got to' or 'used to').

Keep tenses consistent, add clear time markers, and use precise verbs to make your experience more professional and memorable.