Past Perfect Tense

Past Perfect Tense

Hello, English learners. Welcome to a new lesson. We will learn how to use the past perfect simple tense.

We use the past perfect simple to describe an action that occurred before another action or event.

• When we arrived at the theatre, the play had already started. (the play started before we came)
• I saw a mirror on the floor. It had fallen from the wall. ( it had fallen the night before)
• Michael didn’t want to watch the movie because he had already watched it.

The structure is:

HAD + past participle 

• Rob had done his homework.
• Rebecca had gone home.

We use had for all persons, and it can be shortened to ‘d (I’d, you’d, he’d, etc.)

Use the past perfect with the following conjunctions: already, by the time, when, before, and after.

• I offered him the book, but he‘d already read it.
• By the time we arrived at the station, the bus had left.
• When I woke up, my family had had breakfast.
• Someone had broken into the garage before we came.
• After he’d saved enough money, he bought a new computer.

We typically use the past perfect in combination with the past simple tense to indicate the sequence of events. Here, it refers to the action which started in the past and continued up to the given moment in the past.

• When I met him, he had already worked there for a year.
•  Jane Austin had written six completed novels by the time she died.
• I rang the doorbell but nobody opened the door. They’d probably gone out.

Past Perfect Tense

Other uses of the present perfect

We use past perfect in the third conditional and after “wish”:

• If they had looked at the weather forecast, they’d have put on warmer clothes.
• I wish I had never met my ex-boyfriend.

Learn more about the third conditional here

Learn more about wishes and regrets here.

We also use past perfect for reporting sentences in past simple and present perfect:

• He said: “We went on a trip to Oxford yesterday”
• He told me that they had gone on a trip to Oxford the day before.
• She said, “I’ve never been to the Maldives”
• She said that she had never been to the Maldives.

Download the past perfect exercises here

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