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Topic: Past Perfect and Past Simple |
26 November 2002 |
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The easiest tense in English, which we have discussed,
is the past simple tense because it refers to a specific time in the past and because,
in Thai, we have the same notion of time, but do not have the conjugation of the verb.
There is another side to past simple: the more past.
When something happened before a specified time in the past, we use past perfect.
For example:
Somebody called the police because there had been a robbery at the bank.
By the time the police arrived, it was too late.
The robbers had run away before someone could call the police.
The pattern of the past perfect is
had + verb 3
The past perfect tense is also used in conditional sentences,
where the if- clause is contradictory to the time in the past.
For example:
The police were too late. If they hadnt been too late, they would have caught the robbers.
If there hadnt been a robbery at the bank, we could have deposited our checks.
If we had gone to the bank earlier, the checks would have been deposited.
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Exercise: Past Perfect and Past Simple |
| Directions : Put the given verbs in the correct forms. |
 1. By the time he got home, the children __________ (go) to sleep. |
| 2. If I __________ (have) a camera with me, I could have taken some pictures. |
| 3. By last Christmas, Thomas __________ (learn) his first world. |
| 4. We __________ (drink) some wine before the party started. |
| 5. If you __________ (pay) the bills, they wouldnt have cut out the electricity. |
| 6. Billy __________ (read) many books before he started school. |
| 7. I dont know what __________ (happen) because I just arrived. |
| 8. After Jody __________ (take) 5 classes, her English began to improve. |
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Answers |
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