How To Use The Perfect Tense

The perfect tense in German is used to describe completed actions in the past, i.e. I worked or she played in English.

In German we form the perfect tense by combining the auxiliary verb (haben or sein) with correct past participle.

Most verbs take haben as the auxiliary verb when we form the perfect tense, unless they involve movement:

• ich habe
  
• du hast
• er, sie, es hat
• wir haben
• ihr habt
• sie, Sie haben

Some verbs, usually ones descibing movement from one place to another, such as gehen and fahren, take sein as the auxiliary verb:

• ich bin
• du bist
• er, sie, es ist
• wir sind
• ihr seid
• sie, Sie sind

We then combine the correct auxilliary verb with the past participle of the verb we`re translating. Past participles for regular verbs can be formed like this:
1) Find the infinitive of the verb
infinitive of to play = spielen
2) Make the stem of the verb by removing -en from the end stem = spiel
3) Add ge- to the start of the stem and -t to the endpast participle = gespielt
However, for irregular verbs which do not obey this rule you just have to learnt he past participle.
Now we have all the components we need! We just need to combine them. The auxiliary verb always comes second in the clause, with the past participle at the end.
For example:
ich habe Klavier gespielt = I played the piano
Gestern haben wir Tennis gespielt = Yesterday we played Tennis

That`s it! Now you can use German in the perfect tense.