Specified result

Speech patterns are not exactly mathematical formulas because any grammar phenomenon in any language has some restrictions and implications as far as its usage is concerned.
This does not belittle the significance of logical and grammar structures because one must needs have some ready structures in their minds in order to advance in their making progress in a chosen language. There should be some ready makings in our hands, or I’d better say in our heads ensuring supports and some reference points.
However, I think that will be more fruitful if we combine several structures in some short speech exchanges and oppose these structures against each other in order to show their usage in real life dialogues. May be instead of the term “opposition” I’d better use “juxtaposition” but this hair splitting in terminology does not make any difference. Or does it? Opposition means something aggressive unlike juxtaposition – the latter being more friendly and not obtrusive.
Besides, juxtaposition reminds me of an arbitrary and random creative method so broadly propagated by Skinner in his “scrambled eggs” idea of a learning process – this learning process may be more fruitful for any learner who can creatively follow his own nose and intuitive flair instead of following all those grammar oppositions so widely presented in many cut and dry textbooks.
So we may juxtapose such phenomena as PROGRESS (ING), RESULT (have done) and SPECIFIED RESULT (when, where, how) in real life short speech exchanges like this:

Are you still wrapping our luggage?
No, I am not. I have already wrapped it.
Where did you wrap it?
I wrapped it in that corner over there near the kiosk.

If you analyze this speech exchange carefully you may observe that there is something natural and artificial at the same time.

What is natural?
This extract represents a real life situation – when my wife and I were in Barcelona airport some three years ago and were about to depart from that airport for Surgut there was a big crowd of people near the single wrapping stand whose people worked very slowly and none of their workers seemed to be in hurry to open another stand. Then some of them guessed that the process should be expedited and they opened another wrapping stand in the farthest corner of the airport. Those passengers who rushed there with their heavy suitcases managed to wrap their suitcases in time because the check-in procedure was already in progress.

What is artificial?
For didactic and instructing purposes I have to use only one verb in different structures – WRAP.
Actually I might have asked “Are you still standing in a line?” or “Are you still waiting?” using different verbs instead of WRAP but the learning process requires that we should use one verb in different structures – ING for progress in Present Continuous, HAVE + ED in Present Perfect for interruption of progress and reaching some significant new result and only ED in Past Simple for specification of different details of the above-mentioned result.

Even this artificial usage of only one verb might be considered natural if we understand that by asking “Are you still wrapping the luggage?” I do not mean that that person himself or herself is doing that job but only the fact that I include that person into my mental picture as someone taking part in that process and that this process probably has not been finished yet. As soon as this progressive process is finished, we quite naturally expect “I have wrapped it” and when we specify this action by WHEN, WHERE and HOW then we do not have to use this new and significantly informative HAVE again because now we focus our attention not on the ACTION itself (we already know the fact) but on some details connected with this action.

These are just peculiar features of English patterns usage because in other languages like French, German or Italian it is quite normal to use Present Perfect for specifying details, for example:
J’ai fait cela hier, Ich habe es getan gestern, I’ho fatto ieri (I have done it yesterday).

The English grammar does not accept such usage. The above-mentioned example just shows that any grammar models or speech patterns of any language are memorized better if learned not separately but in combination and juxtaposition with each other and tailored to real life situations.
Besides, such a juxtaposition may be quite arbitrary and creative for any student and learner.

Instructor/ Trainer Alexander Khodovets