ESL Speakers Using the Past Perfect

The Past Perfect grammar tense is one of the past tenses that my ESL students regularly avoid using. It is one of the more difficult tenses for students to master because it includes a helping verb, plus a past participle. And if you add an adverb, keeping the order straight is always a challenge.

The Past Perfect tense is used to talk about the past when there are two past tense events, or one past tense event and a particular time in the past. For example, "I had given up before she arrived."

I think the other reason that ESL speakers avoid using the Past Perfect tense is because you really can express all that you need to express by using the Simple Past plus words like "before" and "after."

Learning the Past Perfect just allows an ESL speaker to more fully learn and use the language.

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Past Perfect Progressive Tense Basics

The Past Perfect Progressive is formed this way:

subject + had been + ing.

The difference between the Past Perfect Progressive (also called the Past Perfect Continuous) and the Past Perfect is that the Past Perfect Progressive emphasizes the duration of an activity in the past before another activity or time in the past happened. It’s also used to talk about something that was going on in the past close in time to another activity.

Here are some examples of the Past Perfect Continuous:

I had been sleeping for an hour before they woke me up.

They had been studying English grammar for one year before they felt comfortable speaking English.

She had been teaching ESL for seven years when they asked her to lead the English Department.

She had been jogging in the rain. That’s why she was all wet.

More info on the Past Perfect Continuous tense.

Examples of Past Perfect Tense

I’d like to provide some examples of Past Tense verb usages.

Most of my advanced ESL students avoid using the Past Perfect, although they have studied it and could use it if pressed to do so. ESL and EFL learners don’t have the opportunity to practice the tense and since they don’t have to use it, they will often avoid it. They will often use the Simple Past instead.

Here are some examples of the Past Perfect tense:

He had been at the party for an hour before I got there.

She had enjoyed the movie before some noisy people sat down.

They had studied the Past Perfect tenses before moving onto the Past Perfect Progressive.

We had already eaten by the time she arrived.

You'll notice that all of these sentences could be rewritten using only the Simple Past. This is what my ESL students tend to do, so I try to reinforce the usage of the Past Perfect whenever possible.

More info on Past Perfect lesson plans.

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Making a Lesson Plan

ESL lessons, EFL lessons, English grammar lessons and even lessons on how to ride a bike all need one very important thing: one or more objectives. Assuming the grammar lesson topic is the Past Perfect, examples of lesson plan objectives looks like this:

1. By the end of the lesson, student will be able to distinguish Past Perfect sentences from Simple Past sentences.

2. By the end of the lesson, student will be able to demonstrate knowledge of the proper form of the Past Perfect by writing five sentences in the Past Perfect.

3. By the end of the lesson, student will be able to demonstrate correct usage of the Past Perfect by speaking (or writing) three sentences correctly using this tense.

There are three important things to notice about these objectives:

1. They are all related to the lesson topic (Past Perfect tense).

2. They are all measurable. At the end of the lesson, the teacher should not have to guess whether the ESL learner understands the Past Perfect. An objective that states, “By the end of the lesson, student will understand the Past Perfect,” cannot be measured. How do I know if the student understands it or not if he or she does not somehow demonstrate the knowledge?

3. They are all student-focused: “student will be able to…” The objective should not state something like, “Teacher will teach the Past Perfect.” This is not a learning objective.

How the teacher or tutor goes about trying to meet the student-focused objectives is the stuff that is included in the rest of the lesson plan (i.e., the steps the teacher carries out during the lesson to help the learner meet the objectives. These steps can include exercises from a grammar book, a conversation focusing on the grammar point, a presentation by the teacher (although this should take only a short amount of time), ESL games, etc.

This approach can (and I think, should) be used for all lesson plans, not just ESL or EFL or English lessons. They can be used for history lessons, math lessons, etc.