B2.1 - Using Past Perfect

PAST PERFECT TENSE

This is a summary of this tense and its uses:

Form	SUBJECT	HAD	PAST PARTICIPLE	REST OF THE SENTENCE
Affirmative	My friend	had	finished	her homework when I arrived
Negative	She	hadn’t	got	dressed yet
Interrogative (inversion)	Hadn’t	she	had	enough time before my arrival?

Uses

It's the tense used when an action happened BEFORE another past action, so both are usually related, that is, past simple and past perfect normally go together:

• Before I arrived home I realised I hadn’t  bought some fruit for dinner

It's very common in TIME complex sentences with before / after / when:

• After she had left the room, Peter started talking about her

It's a perfect tense so it’s frequently used with these adverbs: ALREADY / YET / JUST / EVER / NEVER

• It had just started raining when we took the car

You’ll find it in specific sentences when using:

1. Reported speech: He said he hadn’t seen her before
2. Impossible or 3rd conditional: If I had known you were coming I would have prepared something special for dinner
3. Regrets or complaints in the past: I wish/ If only I had spoken to her

To practise with this grammar point you can do these exercises: exercise 1 exercise 2 exercise 3
exercise 4    exercise 5    exercise 6 

Remember you have more information in Google Classroom. Take care and keep on working.