Past Perfect Simple – Free ESL Resources!

A free, downloadable past perfect simple lesson

In English, we use the past perfect simple to describe an event in the past that occurred before another event in the past. We recommend the past simple and the present perfect simple as pre-requisites. Scroll down for a free, downloadable lesson plan!

Reminder: with an Off2Class account, you can find our past perfect simple lesson content (VS 6.1 – Past-Perfect-Simple-1 and VS6.2 – Past-Perfect-Simple-2) in the Verbs Simple category on our Teacher tab. If you haven’t yet set up your account, be sure to get set up on our Home page. Here’s a short summary of what you can expect to find:

VS 6.1

We begin by outlining the main use of the past perfect simple for an event in the past that occurred before another event in the past, by using a series of timeline examples:

We also make special note of the distinction between using the past perfect simple and the past simple to make it clear that an event was finished before another event. Consider these examples:

The student is then provided with ample opportunities to express events in the past using the past perfect simple, with several timeline examples.

I’ve included here a link to download this lesson, so that you can access it even without an Off2Class account:

VS 6.2

We begin the lesson by explaining that in common speech, we often use a contraction to express the past perfectsimple (I’d stopped driving as soon as I got your phone call). Additionally, we make special note that in spoken English it can often be difficult to decipher the difference between the past perfect simple (he’d finished dinner) and the future tense (she said she’d finish dinner by 7pm) when using a contraction.

We also offer the student strategies to determine whether the past perfect simple or the past simple is appropriate in a given situation. Generally, if we have two events in the past with short durations, we can use the past simple to describe each event. If one of our events in the past has a longer duration than the other, we would typically use the past perfect simple:

We provide a number of exercises at the end of the lesson to practice this distinction.

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