present perfect or past tense

[thomas615]

Teacher, this question always asked when you at a job interview: What do you consider to be your important achievement of past year? I assume I can use both past tense and present perfect tense here. Am I right?

My important achievement of past year is that I learned a new accounting program.

My important achievement of past year is that I have learned a new accounting program.

 

[Tdol]

First, it's the past year. You can use both verb forms depending on what your trying to say. In this case, I would say something like this:

My biggest achievement of the past year has been learning a new accounting program.