This paper presents the analysis conducted at the Faculty of Education on the journals written by Module C (English language module) students of one generation (enrolled in 2015) years 1-3. The number of 230 journals that were analysed were written in the first, second and third year of study as part of English Language Practice courses. Journals are free written compositions, up to 500 words long, that students submit twice in a semester. The main aim of this analysis was to find out if the students use the Present Perfect tense, considering the fact that such a verb tense does not exist in the Croatian language, and if they do, whether they use it correctly or the Present Perfect tense is replaced by a different tense. For this purpose, it was necessary to find the instances of the Present Perfect tense, both simple and continuous, in students’ journals, and to determine whether it was used accurately. Furthermore, it was necessary to find out whether Present Perfect should have been used instead of the tense originally used. Also, in line with the main aim, an emphasis was put on how frequently the students use the Present Perfect tense. The sentences containing the Present Perfect tense were extracted in a table along with the examples of sentences where Present Perfect should have been used. These sentences were later compared with their Croatian translations. The results showed that the majority of students avoid using the Present Perfect tense and use the Past Simple tense instead. The reason lies either in mother tongue interference or simply in not distinguishing when Present Perfect should be used instead of Past Simple. Since in Croatian there are no verb tenses equivalent to those in English, sentences from Croatian into English are frequently translated literally and, therefore, the use of the Present Perfect tense is avoided.