# World 3: Rocky vulcano - Past perfect

Past perfect

The past perfect indicates a time earlier than before now. It is used to show that one event happened before another in the past. It doesn't matter which event is mentioned first in a sentence- the present perfect makes clear which one happened first.

In the examples below, event A is the event that happened first and event B is the second or more recent event:
1. Madison had gone out when I arrived at school.
2. I had saved my online document before my laptop lost the wifi connection.
In the examples below the event in the second part of the sentence occured first.
3. When my family arrived, my grandparents had already started cooking dinner.
4. Dylan was exhausted because he hadn't slept all night, he stayed over at Liam's.
How to make the past perfect?
The past perfect tense has two parts: the past tense of the verb to have (had) + the past participle of the main verb. Follow two steps to make the past perfect.

Step 1: Use the verb "to have' in its past form. This indicates that the tense occurs in the past.

I had
You had
she/he/it had
We had
They had
Step 2: Combine the past tense of 'to have' with the past participle of the main verb of the sentence. For most verbs the past participle requires you to add -ed to the verb. For example, played.
Examples
When Nicole arrived at the hockey field, her team had already played one round without her.
They hadn't asked for permission, so they were not allowed to enter the building.
Hadn't you finished the assignment?

- Read the explanation in your textbook on p.79
- Tip: Watch the video. The narrator explains the present perfect by giving examples, discussing exceptions and showing images.

Past perfect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGvDiycGoOg&ab_channel=LearnEnglishonSkypeLearnEnglishonSkype