How to use the PAST PERFECT TENSE...today!

Hi. In this lesson, I'm going to show you how you can start using one of the advanced

tenses right away, and that is the past perfect

tense. Now, there are many ways to master

the tenses. In English, we have 12 different

tenses, and I have a special program, special

course with lots of videos on each and every

one of these tenses, which you should definitely

watch if you haven't had a chance to see it already. And I have one on the past perfect

tense as well, a complete lesson. I will send...

Give you the links, okay, to those... Those

courses. But what we're going to do today will allow you to jump in and start using

the tense right away, because there are two

ways to improve your English. One is, of course,

to study the grammar and so on, and understand

the structure, and when to use it, and what

to do. And the other is just jump in, try to

understand what's being said, and you might

just get it right away. And I think that in this case, that's what will happen for you.

So, let's look at how to use this past perfect tense.

So, let's just start with a little intro to show you a timeline here. In this timeline,

we see this is now, everything before this is the past, and everything after this is

the future. In the past, we can use the past

simple to talk about anything that happened

before now, but if we want to talk about more

than one thing that happened in the past,

then we use the past perfect to show that

in the past, a few things happened, but this

happened first in the past, and then something

else happened, okay? That's the only theory

you're going to get. Let's look at the examples

so I think you will understand very clearly.

The first one, I had planned to call you, but my phone died. Now, in this example, I

had planned is what? This is the past perfect,

that was what I had decided earlier, that

is what I had planned, but then my phone died,

just past simple. So, in this particular structure

that I'm showing you today, with all of the examples, you're going to see that somebody

had a plan, but then life happened, and something,

there was another result, and I'm sure that

all of us can apply this situation and this context to our lives. Let's look at another

example. I had hoped to meet John, but he

left early. So, where's the past perfect here?

Here, I had hoped, right? I had hoped to meet

John, but he left early. Left is the past

simple. So, in this kind of construction,

we're using past perfect and then past simple,

okay? Next, I had wanted to study tonight, but I was too tired, okay? Not a good idea

if that happens too often, but it happens once

in a while to all of us. So, what happened

here? This person said, "I had wanted", right,

past perfect, "to study tonight, but I was",

right, past simple, "too tired". Alright? So, you see here, had planned, had hoped,

had wanted, all of these are the past perfect.

Yes, it's an advanced tense, but if you understand

in what context we use it or why we use it, then it'll make more sense to you to want

to use it and to be able to use it, right? But first, we have to understand why do we

even have this? Well, it's to show that you had two things happen. One happened first

and then another one happened, and all of them happened in the past.

Let's look at some other verbs that we could

use in the same way. I had decided to arrive

home early, but there was a lot of traffic. Or, I had expected to receive their reply,

but it didn't arrive. Or, he had promised

to help me, but he had to work late. Or, she

had offered to join me at the party, but she was out of town. Okay? So, the way that

you could practice this is think about some situations in your own life, alright? Say

what, maybe there was something that you had

decided, but, alright? It doesn't always have

to be used this way, but this is definitely one kind of sentence structure that we can

use for that purpose, alright? So, here, we saw this pattern. We saw the past perfect

tense with an infinitive, right? I had planned

to call. I had hoped to meet. Infinitive means

when we say to call, to meet. I had wanted to

study. That is one way, and next, I'm going

to show you another little way in which you can use the same pattern to help you start

using the past perfect tense.

Now, we'll see similar examples, except this

time, after the past perfect, we don't need

to have an infinitive, but we are using nouns.

So, let's look at an example. We had ordered

a large pizza, but they sent a small one. Oh no, what are we going to do? So, we had

ordered is our past perfect, right? Sent is the

past simple, but here, we see we had ordered

a pizza, right? We don't need to say, use the

infinitive after that for any reason because

it wasn't necessary in this context, okay?

Next, he had made an appointment, but it was

postponed, alright? So, again, here, we have

our past perfect and the past simple. He had

made. Made what? An appointment. So, we just

have a noun after that, and that's perfectly fine as well, okay?

Next, she had requested a window seat, but none

were available. So, again, she had requested

what? A window seat, a noun, right? But none

were available, alright? So, I hope you see

that this past perfect tense, which is, as I said, an advanced tense, can nevertheless

be very useful to talk about everyday life, to talk about different situations in your

personal life, in your professional life, in your academic life, or anything else.

The best way that you can really adopt this

and start using it yourself is to write some

examples for yourself about your life. Is there something that you had planned to do,

but something happened? Is there something that you had hoped to do, or see, or watch,

or read, or whatever, and something happened, and so on and so forth, okay?

So, by writing those kind of examples about yourself, this will become a part of you,

and it will become a more natural part of

the way in which you communicate in English.

And of course, check out the course, okay?

If you want the full explanation of this past

perfect tense, I have an entire video class

on this tense, as well as classes and videos

on every single one of the English verb tenses.

So, check those out, go to www.engvid.com,

do some more practice. You can definitely move forward in English every single day.

Take care. Bye for now.