Past simple and past perfect tense in English

Hello, everyone. This is Paula.

Great to see you all here again.

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Now, let’s begin.

Today, we’re going to talk about past simple and past perfect.

We use simple past if we talk about past events in the order

in which they occurred.

I went to the cinema, I bought popcorn,

and then I watched the film.

However, when we’re already talking about the past and want

to refer to an event at an earlier point in the past,

we use past perfect.

I knew what would happen at the end of the film,

as I had read the book.

In affirmative sentences, simple past is made up

of subject plus verb in the past tense.

In negative sentences, the structure is subject plus

didn’t plus infinitive verb.

In interrogative sentences, the structure is question

word plus did plus subject plus infinitive verb.

In affirmative sentences, past perfect is made up

of subject plus had plus past participle.

In negative sentences, the structure is subject plus

hadn’t plus past participle.

In interrogative sentences, the structure is question

word plus had plus subject plus past participle.

Here, we’re going to focus on how to use them together.

Let’s take a look at some examples.

Hi, Nick. How are you doing?

Hi, there. I’m good.

How about you?

Oh, you will never believe what I day I had yesterday.

Why, what happened?

It all started in the morning.

I was going to have breakfast but I couldn’t because we had

run out of coffee.

And then, in the afternoon, I was supposed to meet

a friend downtown, but I didn’t recognise

here because she had dyed her hair the day before.

It took me an hour to find her.

And when I finally did, it started to rain and we

got absolutely wet because we hadn’t brought our umbrellas.

Ah, so terrible.

Then, we wanted to go to London Restaurant,

but we couldn’t because we hadn’t booked a table.

Oh, what a pity, I love that restaurant.

Had you been there before?

No, I hadn’t, that was going to

be my first time.

But don’t worry, not everything was a nightmare,

there’s always a silver lining.

You know, when I arrived home, I was going to go to bed but I

went downstairs for a glass of water and I realised that

my family had arranged a surprise party for me!

Woah, that’s super-cool.

Yes, all my friends were there.

What a surprise!

All your friends?

Paula?

Um, hi, Nick?

I think I’m losing you.

Nick?

Bye.

As we have seen, the past perfect action

always happens before the simple past action.

Let’s do a quiz to practice.

Which action happened first?

How was the quiz?

I’m sure you did well.

Very good for that.

What about you?

Have you ever had a surprise party?

Try to use the tenses we learned and leave us

a comment below with your story.

I hope you really enjoyed this video, and if you did,

don’t forget to like it.

See you in the next video.

This was Paula, over and out.