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.