Past Perfect Tense過去完成式

Past Perfect Tense過去完成式

1.      The past perfect tense expresses action in the past before another action in the past. This is the past in the past.

l   The train left at 9am. We arrived at 9.15am. When we arrived, the train had left.

l   They were hungry. They had not eaten for five hours.

2.      We often use the past perfect tense in reported speech after verbs like said, told, asked, thought, wondered:

l   He told us that the train had left.

l   I thought I had met her before, but I was wrong.

The structure of the past perfect tense is:

subject	+	auxiliary verb HAVE	+	main verb
		conjugated in simple past tense		past participle
		had		V3

For negative sentences in the past perfect tense, we insert not between the auxiliary verb and main verb. For question sentences, we exchange the subject and auxiliary verb. Look at these example sentences with the past perfect tense:

	subject	auxiliary verb		main verb
+	I	had		finished	my work.
+	You	had		stopped	before me.
-	She	had	not	gone	to school.
-	We	had	not	left.
?	Had	you		arrived?
?	Had	they		eaten	dinner?

Exercise

1.	Yesterday afternoon I went downtown and I __________________(meet)  Peter.
2.	What were you doing when your father _________________(come) ?
3.	These shoes were very clean because our housemaid ________________(clean)  them.
4.	The exercises were very difficult, nobody_____________ (know) what to do with them.
5.	She ____________________(not know) him for a long time when she married him.
6.	My teacher asked me why I _____________(not do) my homework.
7.	It wasn't his first trip to the mountains, he ______________(be) there many times before.
8.	I went to the car park to get my car and I found that somebody ________________(steal) it.
9.	I went to see my friend but she _________________________(be) on holiday.
10.	I was watching the news when I _______________(start) feeling ill.
11.	I was very exhausted after finishing my work, so I _______________(go) straight to bed.
12.	I lost my key a few days ago and then I suddenly ____________________(find) it in my pocket.
13.	I enjoyed my cousin's wedding but I ______________________(go)  home soon.
14.	I didn't watch TV when I ______________________(be)  on holiday last summer.
15.	I bought a new car because some thieves __________________(stole) my old one.
16.	Everybody ___________________(leave) the house by the time I came home.
17.	By the time the film started many cinema-goers ________________________(arrive) .
18.	As soon as he _______________________(mend) the old watch it broke again.
19.	After I _______________________________(finish)  my lesson I was very happy.
20.	After he _______________________(start)  the lesson I left.