The Past Perfect
The Past Perfect
Use
1. We use the Past Perfect to link an action in the past to another action which happened earlier. The Past Perfect makes clear which action happened first
The students had read Shakespeare’s
‘Macbeth’ before they saw the film version.
Here the verb ‘read’ has an auxiliary (‘had’), to show that it happened before ‘saw’.
First the students read the book. Then they saw the film.
Here’s another sentence from the text:
Although it was revised in more recent years, Bloom’s Taxonomy had categorised thinking skills as Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) and Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) as early as 1956. (4).
This sentence is talking about the past.
It talks about two points of time in the past: 'recent years', and 1956.
'had categorised' tells us that one point in time (1956) came before the other (when the Taxonomy was revised).
In other words, we are looking back from the present to two points in time in the past, and the Past Perfect Tense tells us which came first.
Napoleon was forced to abdicate and go in exile to the Italian island of Elba. In 1815 he escaped and returned to power, but he was finally defeated at the Battle of Waterloo.
He spent the last six years of his life in confinement on the island of Saint Helena.
So we can say:
Before he was imprisoned on Saint Helena, Napoleon had spent some time in exile on the island of Elba.
The Past Perfect in Conditional Clauses
We use the Past Perfect in Conditional clauses which describe something in the past which did not happen.
If I had gone to university, I would have studied Mathematics.
If Napoleon had won at the Battle of Waterloo, he would not have been imprisoned.
If Potassium (K) had been added to Chlorine (Cl) instead of the Sodium (Na), it would have formed Potassium Chloride (KCl).
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