Past perfect and past simple

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3y ago 3:26

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Improve your English today at ANGLOPOD.COM. Hi everyone, I’m Dan and today we’re going to look at the difference between the past perfect and past simple tenses in English. Why do we need these two tenses? How do we use them? Let’s find out more…

We saw in an earlier lesson that we use the past simple to talk about something that is finished in the past, normally with a time reference that shows us exactly when this finished event happened in the past.

However, sometimes we need to talk about more than one event that happened in the past. If they happened at the same time, we can just use the past simple for both events. For example: “When I ARRIVED at the party, John LEFT”.

Here, there are two verbs, both in the past simple, ARRIVED and LEFT. But using the past simple for both events sounds like they happened together, at the same time. Also, it sounds like they are connected. It sounds like John LEFT because I ARRIVED.

So sometimes we need to express that two things happened in the past but at different times and maybe there is no connection. That’s why we need the past perfect. For example: “When I ARRIVED, John HAD LEFT”. ARRIVED is past simple, but HAD LEFT is past perfect. This means that John left first and then I arrived later, so there is probably no connection between these two events now.

We also saw in an earlier lesson that we make the present perfect with the auxiliary verb HAVE and the past participle of the main verb. Making the past perfect is very similar. We use the past of the auxiliary verb HAVE, which of course is HAD, and then we add the past participle of the main verb. So in this example, HAD LEFT.

Learn more about English tenses at ANGLOPOD.COM. Good luck and see you soon!

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