In this video, we are going to go through the second of the perfect tenses. And if its not present perfect, it must be of course past perfect. So there are two things you have to know about past perfect. One, it describes an action that started in the past and stopped at some other point in the past. So maybe we have three days ago.

It's actually saying Wednesday. You did something. Dum, dum, dum. There's Thursday. There's Friday, and then something else happened. After the first verb.

And now I'm talking and let's say it's Saturday. Now this is not the most helpful thing in the world. I know many teachers have drawn this before. Many books use this as well. But it will help once you actually see the sentences. But before we get there, it's important to note the had plus the participle.

Present tense, you may remember, had have or has plus the participle. These are present tense form of the verb to have. However, now we're in past perfect, so we're gonna use had plus the participle. So let's see that in action here. Starting with A, until Mary studied abroad, she had never left the United States.

Okay, so we have Mary. She is studying abroad. We'll say studying abroad. This is some time in the past. I am talking. Or the sentence the person who's saying this is the present.

This is her studying abroad. Before that, what had happened? She had never left the US. So never left. And we're gonna call this the past past. That's the idea of the past perfect.

One event in the past happening before another even in the past and you're describing this in the present. So again, until Mary studied abroad, some time I'm saying in 2009, she had never left the U.S. That is all the time before 2009. Let's take another look at B. I had bought a used vacuum cleaner but returned it after it began to eat up pieces of carpet, oh no!

What a bad vacuum cleaner. So let's say, Wednesday, bought the vacuum clear. That's my vacuum cleaner drawing. Thursday, you use it, and it eats up the carpet. There's the carpet got eaten up. And on Saturday you maybe go and return it.

So I had bought a used vacuum cleaner. Here's Wednesday, had bought. What happened after that? Well you returned it. That's actually get rid of that, sorry. Thursday is the return day.

After it began to eat up pieces of carpet so we're assuming that you returned it on Thursday, or anytime after you bought it. So again, the past past event happened before the other event which is the returning. I returned it. Now notice the second event is in simple past, this is very important, simple past.

The event in the past past, PP, is past perfect and therefore you have to use the had plus the participle. Participle of buy is bought. Okay let's take a look here at a few more examples. After I had gone to the movies. Then in the past.

You watch the movie from three to five. At six, you go to have coffee with your friends. What do you do, I met, that's at six o'clock. Had coffee. I met up with friends. What happened before that event?

In the past is gone to the movies, which right there. I'm at the movies. I've gone to the movies. Now, sometimes, when you're doing something in the past that continues on, you can also use another tense. So, if you look at D, it says when you called, I had been watching TV.

You can see this is a continuous or progressive tense. So you can sometimes mix the two together. But if the idea is you want to talk about an event in the past that is suddenly interrupted by another event in the past, then you wanna use the past continuous or past progressive. Good news, we have video on that coming up very soon.

But if you want to focus on the fact that one event happened. Event one happened and finished. Then event two happened and finished. Then you want to use past perfect. Let's look at E. By the time you called, I had finished my homework.

Had already finished my homework. So you can see that. Finished here at the bottom is the participle of had, and that shows that this event in the past had finished. Boom. Stop, start, it's over, you finish at that moment.

Then the second event. Boom. You called. It's not a continuous event of watching a tv, watching tv, or watching a movie and that's when we use the past perfect. Now to get good at this you want to read a lot, read novels, write a lot as well, see if you are using the correct tense.

This can be tricky even for native speakers this is tricky. But specially for non-native speakers. But in the next two videos you'll see a few other tenses as well so hopefully that will make things clearer.