Yesterday my alarm didn’t ring so I woke up late and missed the bus. When you’re describing past actions in chronological order (in the order they happened from first to last), use the simple past. Had the boys already done their homework when you spoke to them? Past perfect or past simple? Tim had just retired when you joined the firm, hadn’t he? When we got to the airport we realized we’d left the tickets at home. She’d previously worked for a pharmaceutical firm. The new CEO joined the company last month. When we went outside it had just begun to rain. I didn’t go to see the film with my friends because I’d already seen it. The kids were really excited about visiting the fun park. When Miguel arrived, the party had already started. We can also use yet with the past perfect, and put it at the end of the sentence. These are positioned between had and the past participle. He had worked hard all day.It’s common to use the following adverbs with the past perfect like already, just, never, previously. For this reason it’s almost always used with another phrase in the simple past. We use the past perfect to refer to something that happened more in the past than something else. The short answer form is Yes, I had./No, I hadn’t. Here is a table with a complete set of examples: To make questions we invert the auxiliary verb had and the subject:Īnd to make negative forms we add ‘not’ to ‘had’: We form the past perfect by using ‘had’ and the past participle of the verb. As with the past continuous, the past perfect is almost always used in combination with another past tense, usually the simple past. It’s fairly easy to create and has the same form for all the subjects, like the simple past. This past tense is another really useful structure to introduce to the language you use.

Try our fun quiz and then read on to find out more! The Past Perfect The past perfect tense, gives you the missing link that enables you to compare different times and actions in the past. You’re probably already very familiar with the simple past and present perfect, and have perhaps also learned to use the past continuous. Having the right skills to be able to speak in detail about the past in English is a great advantage, whether it’s at work or on holiday.

Past tense of ring up