Learn the Difference

The differences between the Present Perfect Simple and Present Perfect Continuous Tenses...👇👇👇

(1) I have been playing tennis for five years.

The tense is the Present Perfect Continuous Tense. The time phrase indicates the duration (five years). The combination of the tense and the time phrase forces us to read it as: "I have been playing tennis for five years now." This gives us the reading that the activity has been going on for five years up until now. It also implies that the activity is likely to keep continuing, at least in the immediate future.

(2) I have played tennis for five years.

The tense is the Present Perfect Simple. The time phrase is, again, "for five years". However, the sentence is different from (1). It doesn't force us to read the time part as "for five years up to now". 

It's unclear exactly when exactly in the past  the speaker has played tennis. All we know is that it happened before now, at least five years but before now not up to now. (In other words, it's possible to read the sentence as "At some point in my life, I've played tennis for five years.") It's unclear whether it has ended or not. It's also possible that it's been continued up until now, and possibly will continue into the future. The speaker says nothing explicitly, so we have a wider range of possible readings.

Having said that, the preferred reading, out of context, is: "I have played tennis for five years now." Which means nearly the same thing as (1). When we read both alternatives as "for five years now", the difference is very little. To demonstrate such a small difference, these examples can be helpful:

How long have you been playing tennis?

I've been playing tennis for five years.

Do you know how to play tennis?

Of course, I've played tennis for five years.