The use of past perfect tense - English Grammar Tenses

EFL/ESL Grammar: English tenses

The use of past perfect tense in English

The past perfect is used to talk about an action or an event that happened in the past before another action. Usually, we have two actions. The first one is put in the past perfect tense and the second is put in the simple past. It is not important which one happened first. The tense can be used to indicate which one happened before the other.

The grammatical structure of the past perfect:

Subject + had + verb (past participle)

Example:

When she came from school, I had already gone to the supermarket.

The use of past perfect

Just like what is mentioned above, we use the past perfect to show that an action happened before another one in the past.

The past perfect is used with the following adverbs:

When – before – by the time – as soon as – after – because – until

Note:

You can easily remember the use of these adverbs. Because and after are always used to introduce the past perfect. So a sentence that includes one these two adverbs will have the first action in the past perfect, and the second in the simple past. Before and by the time are used to introduce the simple past. So a sentence that includes one of these will have the immediate sentence in the simple past and the other one in the past perfect.