| Hi, everybody. My name is Alisha in this lesson. |
| I'm going to talk about using the past perfect tense I'm also going to talk about using the past perfect progressive or past perfect continuous tense Let's get started. |
| Okay first. |
| Let's take a look at the past perfect How to make the past perfect this is a very quick introduction to making a past perfect statement So when we make past perfect we use had for positive statements or Had not for negative statements, then we add the past Participle form of a verb so we'll use this in a few example sentences So we use the past perfect tense in a few different Situations the first two I feel are probably some of the more common ways to use them. |
| Let's look here first We use past perfect tense one to show a past action that happened before another past action so to kind of visualize this I Want to look at this part right here on my timeline I have a timeline that goes from the past here to the present now and up to the future So here in this part. |
| I want to look here for this number one of past perfect When we want to express that two things happened in the past One action happened before another action We can use the past perfect tense to show the action that happened further in the past and simple past tense To show the action that started more recently or that happened more recently rather, so let's look at an example He hadn't Contacted me for weeks Then suddenly he invited me for coffee So here we see hadn't contacted This is the negative form of the past perfect tense hadn't is the contracted form of had not Contacted is my past participle verb. |
| He hadn't contacted me for weeks So this is my past perfect situation, so this is the first point hadn't contacted me for weeks This is the situation then Suddenly he invited me so this is a simple past tense comment He invited me for coffee so my simple past thing happened next so we can show this progression of actions here in some cases when it's very clear like if the writer or the speaker uses before or After we don't always need to be so strict with using past perfect and simple past tense But sometimes especially when writing stories, this is very useful for showing the order of actions in sentences Okay, so let's continue to the second point with past perfect tense we use past perfect to express something that started in the past and Continued to another point in the past so to kind of imagine this Let's look at this part of the timeline here so again We're in the past we have something that started in the past and Continued but also it ended in the past as well So it does not continue to the present which would be the present perfect tense But it continued to a point in the past and stopped there So an example sentence with this when I got my current job I had lived in New York for four years So here we see again had lived is our past perfect tense in this case I'm using the positive form had and lived I had lived in New York for four years So this is my continuing action the thing that was The began in the past and continued to a point in the past So I have again simple past tense here when I got my current job This part shows us where this action kind of stops so when I got my current job I Had lived in New York for four years So this point on the timeline is where the speaker began living in New York the point in time The speaker lived in New York lived in New York and the person got their job now in this case It doesn't mean that the speaker stopped living in New York But the speaker wants to say at this point in time so even though the action doesn't always stop It's like there's some kind of key point some information here that we want to note So this is an example of that So a continuing action and then a key point in the past maybe stopped the action Or that we just want like kind of mark some importance for us Okay, so finally let's move to the third point for using past perfect We use past perfect to talk about unreal situations in the past You might see this used with things like would have could have and should have so an example of this I would have helped you plan the surprise party if I had known about it If I had known about it This use of the past perfect tense shows us the speaker did not know about it in the past So this is an unreal situation if I had To visualize this again. |
| We're in the past. |
| Here's something I've used a dotted line here to show it's not real So there's something back here in the past that did not happen But that we want to reference now we want to talk about it now So if in the past I had known so I did not know but if I had known I would have helped you plan. |
| So this is an unreal situation We can use past perfect for all of these So let's compare this then to the progressive or the continuous use of past perfect When we make the progressive or continuous form we use had yes and had not in the negative then we add been Plus the progressive form of a verb So we use this one to show actions that continue in the past until a point in the past So yes, this is very similar to this past perfect use that I talked about but we often use this to express like an Interrupted action an action that was stopped by another action So this means for example in this example sentence I had been studying for an hour when my mom got home So this is an interrupted action or there's some kind of change in the situation Everything happens in the past though. |
| So here had been studying is my past perfect progressive tense This is the continuing action on my timeline here. |
| It's in blue my continuing action in the past I had been studying for an hour. |
| So this action continued for an hour was continuing for an hour then The sentence says when my mom got home, so when here Marks the point where the action changes or the situation changes or is interrupted So here I've marked in red with this X is the interruption when my mom got home We use Simple past tense to describe the interrupting action the thing that stopped or changed the continuing action So I had been studying for an hour past perfect progressive when my mom got home simple past tense So we use this to talk about actions that were interrupted in the past We can also use this as kind of like one point five point number one point five or two I guess for today. |
| We can also use this to talk just about actions that didn't necessarily Change or get interrupted, but we want to talk about something that was Continuing and then we kind of from the context from the conversation We understand when it stopped so a great example of this is a sentence like this. |
| We were exhausted Because we've been working all night So here you can see there's not really a change like there's not really a point where there's an interruption Or something stops or something new happens in this case. |
| We're just kind of making Two past tense statements similar to what I talked about in point one over here But we want to emphasize a continuing action So here I have past tense we were exhausted we were exhausted exhausted means very tired we were exhausted because we'd this part, please be careful a good note here we had We were exhausted because we've been working all night So this working action had continued all night long We want to emphasize that and then after that we were exhausted But there's not there's not a change there. |
| It's like the speaker is telling a story Maybe so we were exhausted because we've been working all night When we got home we found out we didn't have our keys so you might see a sentence like this in a story So it's not like I said a specific point where a change occurs But we kind of understand from the story or from the situation What's happening so you'll see this continuous or the progressive form used quite commonly in these kinds of situations So this is a quick introduction to using the past perfect tense and the past perfect progressive tense I hope that this helps you understand these two grammar points if you have any questions or comments or want to practice making some Sentences with this grammar, please feel free to do so in the comment section of this video Thanks very much for watching this lesson and I will see you again soon. Bye. Bye |
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