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Past Perfect: Most Common Mistakes & How To Avoid Them
Discover common Past Perfect tense errors and their solutions at our San Diego English school, where tailored courses and experienced teachers await to boost your English skills.
Discover common Past Perfect tense errors and their solutions at our San Diego English school, where tailored courses and experienced teachers await to boost your English skills.
Everyone agrees that language learning involves mistakes, and perhaps, you’ve also noticed this while attending a San Diego, CA, school for English language learning. Perfect tenses simply elude you. The Present Perfect trips you up a lot. And what about the Past Perfect? You feel completely lost!
“Always practice and be patient,” your teachers console you. “And learn from the mistakes of your peers”. So in this article, we’ll take a look at the typical problems students have when using the Past Perfect. Read on!
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While using any tense, you can make two types of mistakes. You can either get the form wrong or use the tense in an inappropriate context. The Past Perfect Tense isn’t an exception.
That’s why we share with you some of the problems students usually have while using it in their everyday conversations.
While formulating their Past Perfect sentences, students usually have difficulties with the past participle form, as they need to know the long list of irregular verbs.
To get a handle on them, you shouldn’t just try to memorize them alphabetically. Instead, think of a more systematic approach. For example, you can place those with similar patterns into groups. Here are a few suggestions:
Some irregular verbs have all three forms the same: cost, let, cut, hit.
Some of them end in -en in their past participle form: write-wrote-written, rise-rose-risen.
Some verbs have the same Past Tense and past participle form: feed-fed-fed, find-found-found.
So scrutinize the list, and you might devise a system that makes sense to you. This way, you’ll have these verbs at your fingertips sooner than you can imagine.
Another mistake students tend to make is to use the Past Perfect Tense more often than they should. Let’s examine the following examples:
In the sentence above, we simply need the Past Simple Tense because we’re describing one past activity. We need a Past Perfect verb form only if we have more events and if we need to emphasize which one occurred first.
In this case, we need the Past Perfect Tense, as we need to indicate what took place first.
However, if it’s evident what action was first, or if we have a list of activities that came one after another in the past, we don’t need the Past Perfect Tense.
In this example, it’s clear that she drank her coffee first and then ran out of her house.
The Past Perfect Tense is used to depict past hypothetical situations. Sometimes, students tend to use the Past Simple form instead.
The Past Simple form in the example above refers to an unrealistic present and doesn’t mean that the speaker talks about their past. Consequently, the first sentence can cause a lot of confusion.
OK, we admit it. Understanding tenses isn’t straightforward at all. Especially complex ones, such as the Present Perfect Tense. That’s why you need experienced teachers to help you out. And where can you find them? Here at the College of English Language.
We offer various courses specially designed to satisfy your individual needs. They’re fun-pact and activity-based, and you’ll love them! And if you can’t come to our stylish Downtown San Diego classrooms, why not take one of our comprehensive online courses? Contact us today and let’s master English together!
