Skip to content

Learn English

You are here:
Past Perfect Tense

The past perfect tense is often used in English when we are relating two events which happened in the past. It helps to show which event happened first. Now we will will explain the rules for forming and using the tense.

Subject
HAVE
Past Participle
Contraction
I
had
stopped.
spoken.
I'd stopped.
I'd spoken.
You
had
stopped.
spoken.
You'd stopped.
You'd spoken.
He
had
stopped.
spoken.
He'd stopped.
He'd spoken.
She
had
stopped.
spoken.
She'd stopped.
She'd spoken.
It
had
stopped.
spoken.
It'd stopped.
It'd spoken.
We
had
stopped.
spoken.
We'd stopped.
We'd spoken.
They
had
stopped.
spoken.
They'd stopped.
They'd spoken.

Where to Use Past Perfect Tense?

This tense is showing you which of the 2 events happened first in the past. Lets say that two things happened in the past:

He went to see the film.
We discussed the film in room.

Now, we can't know which order the events happened in. That may be important ! perhaps I went to see the film after the discussion, or maybe I saw the film before the discussion. There are many ways to make this problem clear, and the past perfect is one of them. This is the way how we do it:

He went to see the film. We had discussed it in the room.

 

Random Image

learnenglish.jpg