236 Part IV: The Grammar You Need to Know – and How to Teach It
He has been running.
He has just missed the bus.
He has been playing with his dog.
Getting to the Past Perfect Simple
You use the past perfect simple tense for an action that happened in the past
before something else that happened in the past.
Imagine that yesterday I saw you looking rather downhearted. A short con-
versation follows:
What was up with you yesterday? You looked really miserable.
When you saw me I had just lost my lucky pen.
Notice the two sets of actions mentioned about yesterday (this works with
any time in the past). The first is ‘saw’ and the second is ‘lost’. However, you
need to show which action happened first. So, you put the action that hap-
pened first in the past perfect (you had lost your lucky pen) and the thing
that happened later in the past simple (I saw you).
Students tend to find the past simple easier and sufficient to convey the idea
that an action happened in the past. Sentences using ‘had had’ may even look
strange to native speakers (I had had a bad night, for example) so students
avoid using it. However, if you don’t push students to use more sophisticated
language they remain at a low level, limit themselves and get marked down in
exams.
Seeing the structure
All perfect tenses include have, has, or had and a past participle (the third
column of most verb tables).
So, in the present perfect simple you use have and has to say:
I/you/we/they have done something.
He/she/it has seen me.
However, in the past perfect you use had. So you say:
I/you/we/they had done something.
He/she/it had seen me.
