Past Perfect Tense

Hi, my name is Rebecca, and in today's lesson, I'm going to show you how to start using the

past perfect tense easily and quickly in English. Now, this is a lesson that was requested by

Merlin, one of our viewers on engVid in the comments section, and also several other viewers

have asked for advanced lessons on the perfect tenses, and that's where we're going to talk

about this today, because the conception is, the idea is that the perfect tenses are very

difficult. That's not necessarily the case, and I hope you'll see after this lesson that

the past perfect tense, in particular, is really quite easy to understand and not so

difficult to start using, okay? The reason that people have difficulties with this tense

is because probably in your language, you may not have all of these tenses as there

are in English, and that's why it's difficult to even understand in terms of time, in terms

of expressing specific periods of time, why we have all of these tenses. But let me try

to simplify it for you, okay? We're going to start by talking about when we use the

past perfect tense, then I'll explain how you use it, and then we'll go over several

examples so that you can start using it yourself, okay? Let's get started.

Okay, so the past perfect tense in English is sometimes called the past of the past.

Why is that? Let me explain to you. We use the past perfect tense when we are talking

about more than one thing that happened in the past, right? Now, for those of you who

have been studying English for some time, you know the simple past tense. The simple

past tense we use to talk about one thing that happened in the past and it's over, right?

Or even a few things that happened at the same time, more or less. But the past perfect

tense is used when we're talking about two or more things that happened in the past,

and you want to show, you want to indicate which of these two things, let's say, happened

first in the past, okay? What do I mean by that? Let's look at this timeline, alright?

On this timeline, this line says now. This is the period of time right now. This is the

past, and that side is the future, okay? So, let's look at the example. These are two events

that happened in the past. One happened closer to now, and one happened before that, right?

So, we have an example of two events that happened, both of them in the past, but one

happened before the other. That one which happened before the other is the one where

we are going to use the past perfect tense to describe, alright? Let me show you exactly

what I mean. So, this is first just past simple, alright? Just two simple past simple sentences.

We arrived at 6 o'clock, alright? Let's say we arrived at the airport at 6pm. This is

a past simple tense sentence. Another past tense sentence, the flight left at 5 o'clock,

alright? That's another past simple sentence, alright? But these are two separate sentences,

and therefore, we just used the past simple. We didn't yet make any connection between

these two events. If we want to connect these two events, then we could say something like

this. When we arrived at the airport, the flight had left, alright? When we arrived

at the airport at 6pm, we discovered that the flight had left at 5pm. So, what happened

first? The flight left at 5pm, right? So, whatever happened first, that is the flight,

we have to use the past perfect tense to describe. The flight had left at that time, okay? Alright.

Now, let's look at this. This chart shows you how to use the past perfect tense, right?

So, here's the subject, and it could be anything, any pronoun, I, you, we, they, he, she, or

it. Then, we use the auxiliary verb or helping verb, "had", and then we use the past participle

of a regular verb or of an irregular verb. So, for example, we could say, "I had arrived.

You had cooked dinner. When I arrived, you had already cooked dinner." Okay? Or, "They

had left. They had gone." Alright? That's how you would physically construct it. You

can't just say, "I arrived", because if you say, "I arrived", or "I cooked", or "They

left", or "He left", right? That would be a problem, because that would just be the

past simple tense. If you want to start using past perfect, then you need to use this auxiliary

verb, "had", in the middle. Alright? Next, I'm going to show you several examples which

will help you to understand even more clearly exactly how to use the past perfect tense.

Okay, so let's look at some examples now of how we can use the past perfect tense. Alright,

so, "When Jane arrived home yesterday, there were several things that had happened before

she came home." So, in the first part of this sentence here, we said, "When Jane arrived",

that's in the past simple tense, but all the things we're going to say after that, all

the things that happened before Jane arrived, we're going to describe using the past perfect

tense. Let's look. "When Jane arrived home yesterday, the maid had cleaned the house.

Her husband had cooked dinner." Jane's a very lucky woman. "The children had finished their

homework. The maid had done the laundry. Her husband had taken the children to a restaurant.

The baby had gone to sleep." Okay? I purposely gave you some examples here, which are regular

verbs, like "cleaned" and "cooked" and "finished", and some which are irregular verbs, such as

"done", "taken", "gone". Right? "Do", "take", and "go". When we use it in the third form,

in the past participle form, then we have to use them like that. Okay? So, all of these

things we know happened before Jane arrived home, and we know that because we say "had

cleaned", "had cooked", "had finished", "had done", "had taken", and "had gone". Okay?

So that past perfect tense shows us what things happened first and what happened after, even

though all of it happened in the past. Okay? Let's look at another example. "By the time

John received the award, he had directed several movies, he had worked with many famous actors,

and he had made a lot of money." Okay? So, all these things, these three things we talked

about happened before John received the award. All right? And that's why here, we use past

perfect tense. And here, we simply use the past tense. All right? So, we see that in

the same sentence, we're using the simple past tense, and we're also using the past

perfect tense. Okay? Next example. "When I got married, there were many things that happened

before that." Right? So, "When I got married", past simple tense. Now, all the things that

happened before, I'm going to talk about in the past perfect tense. "When I got married,

I had graduated from university, I had started my own business, I hadn't bought a house,

and I hadn't made a lot of money yet." Okay? So, you could see that here, you could say

it in the positive or in the negative. All right? Both of them are possible. I hope this

lesson has helped you to understand the past perfect tense a little more clearly. You could

start using it. Just try to think of something that you did yesterday, but something that

happened before that. All right? If you'd like to do a quiz on this, please go to our

website, www.engvid.com. Thanks very much. Good luck with your English.