7. Past Perfect

The Past Perfect tense is quite an easy tense to understand and to use. This tense talks about the "past in the past".
In this lesson we look at the structure and use of the Past Perfect tense, followed by a quiz to check your understanding.

How do we make the Past Perfect tense?

The structure of the Past Perfect tense is:

 Look at these example sentences with the Past Perfect tense:

How do we use the Past Perfect tense?

The Past Perfect tense expresses action in the past before another action in the past. This is the past in the past. For example:

• The train left at 9am. We arrived at 9:15am. When we arrived, the train had left.