If we want to speak English well, understand English well, write English well it is necessary to find out how to understand English grammar.
How we use English verb forms (tenses) is essential to developing good communication in English.
This is part of a series of master classes about how we use English grammar correctly. I am not going to talk about how we construct the verb form but I want to give the basic concepts of how these grammatical forms are used by native English speakers. If you want to see my advice and tips of how to construct English verb forms see Here: verb form structure
The Past Perfect
The Past Perfect tells us about something that happened before another time in the past
When I arrived at the cinema the film had already started
There are two events, here in chronological order:
The film started (at 8.00 pm)
I arrived at the cinema (at 8.10 pm)
I f we focus our attention on: I arrived at the cinema this will mean that The film started is an action or event anterior to that
Another example would be:
John first met Lucy at a conference in 1998
John saw her again at Heathrow airport in London last August
If we focus our attention on last August we would get the following sentence:
When John saw the tall, elegant woman at Heathrow airport last August, he remembered that he had met her some years before.