Past perfect

Past perfect

Exercise 2

Choose the correct past simple or past perfect forms to complete the sentences below.

Page 1 of 2

1 Mum was angry because when I sat down to watch TV, I _____ my dinner.

a.hadn't finished

b.didn't finish

c.hadn't finish

2 I couldn't open the door because I _____ the keys at work.

a.'d forget

b.'d forgotten

c.forgot

3 When Rita travelled to France, she_____ the Louvre.

a.'d visited

b.'d visit

c.visited

4 There were no cookies in the cookie jar. Somebody _____ them all.

a.had eaten

b.'d eat

c.ate

5 I saw some cookies in the cookie jar and I _____ them all.

a.'d eaten

b.'d eat

c.ate

Page 2 of 2

6 I locked the door and then I _____ home.

a.'d left

b.left

c.'d leave

7 When I got home I saw that I _____ the door.

a.hadn't locked

b.hadn't lock

c.didn't lock

8 The house was dirty because nobody _____ it.

a.'d clean

b.had cleaned

c.cleaned

9 She gave me back my book because she _____ reading it.

a.'d finish

b.'d finished

c.finished

10 When she finished the book, she _____ it back to me.

a.'d given

b.'d give

c.gave

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Past perfect form and use – Grammar chart

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Past perfect form

We make the past perfect with had/hadn’t + past participle: -ed for regular verbs and the 3rd column form for irregular verbs.

• I hadn’t been there before.
• She had never worked.

The past perfect is the same for all the persons.

• I/you/he/she/it/we/they had left when I arrived.

We can contract had to ‘d.

• I called him, but he’d gone to a meeting. 

Past perfect use

We use the past perfect when we are talking about the past and then we want to talk about something that happened earlier in the past.

• When I left work, I saw that somebody had stolen my car. 
• Yesterday my mother told me that she had seen you in the park.

Past perfect or past simple?

We use the past simple to describe a series of past events in chronological order, and we use the past perfect to make clear that one of the events happened before. Compare these two sentences:

• When I arrived, she left. (=She left after I arrived.)
• When I arrived, she had left. (She left before I arrived.)

Be careful with this common mistake!

The contraction ‘d can be had or would. Remember that we use an infinitive form after would and a past participle after had.

• I‘d love to go to your party. (= would)
• I noticed that he‘d eaten my cake. (= had)

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