Презентация"Past Perfect"

Past Perfect Tense

The  past perfect , also called the pluperfect, is a verb tense used to talk about actions that were completed before some point in the past.

• When we talk about something that happened in the past we sometimes want to refer back to something that happened before that time. We can use the  past perfect  tense ( had + past participle ) to do this.

Look at these two sentences.

• John left the house at 7:30 yesterday morning.
• Mary rang John’s doorbell at 8:15 yesterday.

Both actions happened in the past so we use the past simple tense. But look at how we can combine the sentences.

• Mary rang John’s doorbell at 8:15 yesterday but John had already left the house.

We use the  past perfect  ( had left ) because the action happened  before  another action in the past ( Mary rang the doorbell. )

Look at these 2 sentences .

Look at some more examples of the  past perfect .

When Mrs Brown opened the washing machine she realised she had washed the cat.

James had cooked breakfast when we got up.

I got a letter from Jim last week. We’d been at school together but we’d lost touch with each other.

James cooked breakfast when we got up.

The  past perfect  is used because they were at school  before  he received the letter. It refers to an earlier past.

In the first sentence, the past perfect tells us that James cooked breakfast  before  we got up. In the second sentence, first we got up and then James cooked breakfast.

A note!

The most common mistake with the past perfect is to overuse it or to use it simply because we are talking about a time in the distant past.

For example we would  not  say

• The Romans had spoken Latin

but rather

• The Romans spoke Latin

because it simply describes a past event, and not an event before and relevant to another past event.

Remember that we only use the past perfect when we want to refer to a past that is  earlier  than another time in the narrative.

Affirmative

Negative

I  had decided

Interrogative

I hadn't decided

You  had decided

You hadn't decided

She  had decided

Had I decided?

Had you decided?

She hadn't decided

We  had decided

We hadn't decided

Had she decided?

They  had decided

Had we decided?

They hadn't decided

Had they decided?