G4:  Verb Tenses I - Past Perfect

by Tom Rohrbach

Multiple Choice Quiz

   
PAST PERFECT is a special verb tense in English.

Usually, we don't need it - we can just use simple past and a time word - like "before" or

"after" or "until".  However, smart people use past perfect because it makes things clearer -

it shows quickly and easily which of two past actions happened FIRST.

We use past perfect only when we are talking about TWO past things together. To use past perfect,

you always need TWO past things, but they aren’t always in the same sentence.

For example:   I wanted to talk to Shirley. Unfortunately, she had already left.

Can you see the relationship between the two past things? Usually, the two

things are in the same sentence, with a past time clause and a main clause.

For example:   Shirley had already left before I could talk to her.

                      Before I could talk to Shirley, she had already left.

The order of the clauses doesn’t matter, but note that the past perfect verb always happened FIRST.

For example:   Alice had visited Denmark before she went to Finland.

                                   Alice went to Finland after she had spent some time in Denmark.

Which country did Alice visit first? Simple: the one with past perfect – Denmark.

Often, past perfect is not necessary – you could just use simple past (see example below). However,

past perfect always makes it perfectly clear (ha ha) which thing happened first – that’s why we use it.

For Example:   Alice visited Denmark before she went to Finland.

[Both clauses use simple past verbs; the time word “before” explains which happened first.]

In the sentences below, figure out which thing happened first, and which happened second.

Then, figure out the correct (or best) verb tense for the blank.