Past Perfect
The Past Perfect Tense considers verbs that happened before a given point-of-view time in the past (they are in the past of the past). For this reason, Insights refers to this tense as ‘double-past’ or ‘super-past’. The key to identifying when to use Past Perfect is to find the points when the order of verbs in a sentence does not align with the chronological order of those verbs.
What to Expect
The Past Perfect tense is often taught in the context of narratives, which is often the way it’s naturally used as well. With that in mind, evaluating a sequence of events can help one figure out when to use Past Perfect instead of Past Simple.*
A great way to do this is with a timeline. Put the events in chronological order on the timeline, and the points at which it doesn’t line up with the order the verbs appear in the sentence/paragraph are the places you need to use the Past Perfect.
Since timelines don’t appeal to every student, this video features numbering the verbs instead, but the two methods are essentially the same.
*Both or either tense can also be continuous, or not.
Prerequisites
Learners should already be familiar with the following:
The Perfect Participle form is sometimes referred to as the ‘Past Participle’ form, and is what Insights designates as ‘V3’ (or Verb 3).
Regular verbs add ‘-ed’ to the end to create the Perfect Participle form. Irregular verbs have ‘-en’ endings or different changes. See the appendix for more.
Have as an auxiliary verb is used for perfect tenses and comes before the main verb (in perfect participle form). The past form of ‘have’ and ‘has’ is ‘had’, often contracted as ‘‘d’.
The Present Perfect Tense is very nearly the same as the Past Perfect Tense except that the perspective of the former is in the present. The usage is otherwise the same, and the only difference in form is the form of auxiliary verb have.
Time Expressions, especially those of sequence such as ‘before’, ‘after that’, ‘during’, ‘therefore’, ‘until’, etc. Absolute time expressions like ‘ever’, ‘recently’, and ‘since’ are also relevant.
Proficiency Level
Students at the B1 level are expected to know the Past Perfect tense. They’d probably start learning it al the Intermediate level (or 4th out of 6).*
*actual starting level varies from one course-book series to the next
By the Numbers
Number the verbs in chronological order.
As you read the numbers in the order they appear
in the sentence, whenever the sequence goes backward, use Past Perfect.
Bonus Notes
Check out our interactive list of Irregular Verbs to see Perfect Participle forms that don’t simply take the conventional -ed ending. Sort or filter this list in order to group irregular verbs together according to how they change from their base form to their Perfect Participle form.
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