Past Perfect Simple


Past Perfect Simple verb tense


John is the man on the right, he has had a really bad travel experience and his boss is not happy!

Try to guess the things that happened to him from these clues:

MISS   PLANE
LATE AIRPORT
PHONE TOILET
LATE HOTEL
MISS LAST BUS AT NIGHT
FEEL SICK
EAT A BAD KEBAB
LOSE PASSPORT
FALL RIVER


Let's imagine the conversation he has with his boss:


BOSS:   So, John why do you look and smell so terrible?  This is unacceptable!
JOHN:   Well, I missed my plane.
BOSS:    And why did you miss your plane?
JOHN:   Because I'd arrived late at the airport.
BOSS:  And why didn't you phone me from the airport to say that you would be late?
JOHN:  Because I'd dropped my phone into the toilet.



We use the PAST SIMPLE to talk about an event in the past and we use the PAST PERFECT (SIMPLE) to talk about an event that happened before the first event.


In the example above, first John arrived late at the airport (1st event) and
 THEN he missed the plane (2nd event).

So, he used the PAST PERFECT for the thing that happened first and the PAST SIMPLE
for the thing that happened after that.


Making Excuses
It's a good verb tense for making excuses.

For example:

Why didn't you do your homework yesterday?
Because I had........

Why did you eat all of the nutella last night?

Why didn't you reply to my WhatsApp message?


Stories
We can also use it to explain the background to an event - this makes a story much more interesting.

Julia bought five cans of purple paint and a pineapple.  She had promised to......
He laughed very loudly on the bus.  The man next to him had.....
They jumped into the sea with all of their clothes.  The police...


Try to complete this story using the past perfect simple, past simple (and possibly also the past continuous).





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