Learn Past Perfect Tense | Basic English Grammar Course

Hi, everybody.

I'm Esther.

In this video, I will introduce the past perfect tense.

This tense is used to describe an action that took place at a specific time in the past.

This tense can be a little tricky, but don't worry I will guide you through it.

There's so much to learn and it's a very important tense.

So keep watching.

Let's take a look at the first usage of the past perfect tense.

This tense can be used to describe an action in the past

that happened before another action in the past.

Here are some examples.

‘I have visited China before I moved there.’

No matter what the subject you follow with ‘had’,

So that's easy.

‘I had’ ‘Steve had’

‘The plane had’ and ‘We had’.

Then, we follow with the past participle of the verb.

In this case, it's ‘visited’.

‘I had visited China.’

Now you'll notice that the second verb is in the past simple tense.

‘I moved there.’

And I'll talk about that a little bit more later on.

‘Steve had bought the book.’

Again, ‘subject’, ‘had’ and ‘past participle’.

In this case, the verb is ‘buy’.

‘Steve had bought the book before he read it.’

Again, we have the simple tense of ‘read’ which is ‘read’.

And finally, ‘The plane had left by the time I got to the airport.’

Again, the first part of this sentence is in the past perfect tense.

‘The plane had left’.

This is the past participle of ‘leave’.

The second verb says, ‘I got to the airport.’

‘got’ is the past tense of ‘get’.

Now what these three sentences have in common is that you'll see, ‘before’.

‘before’ or ‘by the time’.

They all mean the same thing.

The verb that is in the past perfect tense happened first.

The verb that's in the past simple tense happen after.

So again, for the first example.

‘before I move there’ That happened later.

Before that, ‘I had already visited China.’

Do you understand how that works?

Let's take a look at the last example.

‘When they arrived, we had already started the game.’

So maybe they were late or something had happened.

But ‘When they arrived’, this is the past simple tense.

So this happened second.

‘We had already started the game.’

This action had already started.

It started before this action.

Let's move on.

Earlier I mentioned that the past perfect tense can be used to describe an action

that happened in the past before another action in the past.

We can do the same thing but also emphasize the duration.

How long that first action happened.

We do this by using four and a duration.

Let's take a look.

‘I had owned my computer for two months before it broke.’

This is very similar to the first usage.

‘I had’ and the past participle of the verb.

This part shows the action that happened earlier in the past.

The second part, ‘it broke’.

The past simple tense verb shows the action in the past

that happened later than the first action.

However, you'll notice that this sentence has a duration, ‘for two months’.

‘I had owned my computer for two months before it broke.’

All I'm doing here is showing how long the first action had been true.

Let's take a look at the next example.

‘Jim had been lonely for a long time until he got a puppy.’

Again, we have subject ‘had’, past participle.

And then we have the past simple ‘he got a puppy’.

All we're doing here is emphasizing how long first action had been true.

He had been lonely for a long time.

That is until the later action, ‘he got a puppy.’

And finally, ‘She and I had been friends for many years before she became my wife.’

The first part of the sentence is the past perfect.

It happened before she became my wife.

But I want to explain how long that had been true for many years.

Let's move on.

Now I'll introduce how to form the negative in the past perfect tense.

Take a look at the board.

The first sentence says, ‘I had not eaten at the restaurant before I went yesterday.’

Again, we have the past perfect tense here and the past simple tense here.

This one is the action that happened earlier in the past

And this one over here is the action that happened later in the past.

However, because this is the negative, what I'm going to do is add a 'not' between

the ‘had’ and the past participle of the verb.

So I say, ‘I have not eaten’.

Or I can use the contraction

and say, ‘I hadn't eaten at the restaurant before I went yesterday.’

The next sentence is very similar.’

‘She had not been to the circus before she went last week.’

Here's the action that happened earlier in the past,

and here's the action that happened later in the past.

However, again, because it's negative,

I put a 'not' between ‘had’ and the past participle of the verb.

Also, I can use the contraction and say, ‘She hadn't been to the circus.’

The next sentence says,

‘The cat hadn't chased the bird for very long before it flew away.’

Remember, we can show duration,

or how long the first action was true.

by using 'for' and a duration.

Because this is the negative form,

again, I use 'had not' after the subject and before the past participle of the verb

In this case, the contraction ‘hadn't’ is already there for you.

‘We hadn't known each other for three months before we married.’

That's a pretty short time.

It shows the duration by saying ‘for’, How long?

‘three months’

Let's move on.

Now, let's take a look at questions using ‘had’ in the past perfect tense.

Take a look at the first sentence.

It says, ‘She had eaten lunch by noon.’

Now, to turn this into a question is quite easy.

All you have to do is change the order of the first two words.

So instead of ‘she had’, we say ‘Had she’.

‘Had she eaten lunch by noon?’

You can say, ‘Yes, she had.’

or ‘No, she hadn't.’

The next sentence says, ‘It had rained before they left.’

Again simply switched the order of the first two words.

Instead of ‘It had’, say ‘Had it’ to make a question.

‘Had it rained before they left?’

To reply you can say, ‘Yes, it had.’

or ‘No, it hadn't.’

Let's move on now.

I'll go into how to form ‘WH’ questions in the past perfect tense.

Let's take a look.

Here we see at the beginning of each question a 'WH' word.

‘where’, ‘who’, ‘what’, and ‘how’.

Let's take a look at the first question.

‘Where had he traveled before?’

You'll notice that after each ‘WH’ word, we have ‘had’.

And then the subject and then the past participle of the verb.

‘Where had he traveled before?’

The next question says, ‘Who had she talked to before?’

This is the same thing the ‘WH’ word

‘had she’ and then the past participle.

You'll notice here that we have the word ‘before’, but we didn't write a specific point in time.

If you see that it simply means before now.

The next question says, ‘What had he eaten before lunch?’

Again we follow the same formula, however, here it says ‘lunch for you'.

The last one says,

‘How long had she known him before she dated him?’

Again how long ‘had’ + ‘subject’ and then the past participle.

Let's take a look at how to answer these questions.

‘Where had he traveled before?’

‘He had traveled to Europe.’

is one possible answer.

‘Who had she talked to before?’

Here I can say, ‘She had talked to her brother.’

‘What had he eaten before lunch?’

‘He had eaten sushi before lunch.’

And finally, ‘How long had she known him before she dated him?’

‘She had known him for three years.’

That is one possible answer.

Let's move on.

Great job, everyone.

Now you have a better understanding of the past perfect tense.

I know it can be a little difficult but keep studying,

and keep practicing, and you will get better.

I know studying English is not easy but with time and effort,

I know you'll master it.

Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video