Things that go wrong
Think of the worst travel day you have had. Not the most dangerous — the most complicated. The one with the most separate things going wrong.
Hold it. First, the words.
Eight things that happen on a bad travel day. Match each to what it actually means.
The same day, two tellings
Telling one · in the order it happened
I booked a flight to Milan with a connection in Munich. I got to the airport. The Lisbon flight was delayed by two hours. I missed the connection. I went to the desk. There were no more flights that night. I slept in the airport. I got to Milan the next afternoon.
Telling two · in the order she found things out
I got to Munich at about nine in the evening and the gate was already closed. The plane had left forty minutes earlier.
It took me a while to understand what had happened. The Lisbon flight had been delayed by two hours, which I knew, but nobody had told me that the airline had already rebooked half the passengers onto a later connection — and they had not put me on it, because I had checked in at a machine rather than a desk.
So I had spent two hours in Lisbon assuming it was fine, and by the time I reached Munich the decision that ruined my evening had already been taken by somebody I never met.
I slept on a bench and got to Milan the next afternoon.
Five questions comparing the two tellings. They contain the same events.
1. Telling one is entirely past simple. Why can it be?
2. Telling two opens at the closed gate, which is not the first event. What does that force?
3. The plane had left forty minutes earlier. Compare it with the plane left forty minutes earlier.
4. Which telling is easier to follow, and why?
5. When do you actually need the past perfect?
The tense that reaches back
Past perfect: had + past participle
| Form | Contraction | |
|---|---|---|
| All persons | I / you / she / we / they had left | I’d left · she’d left · they’d left |
| Negative | I had not left | I hadn’t left |
| Question | Had you left? | — |
| Participle | The same one the present perfect uses | been · gone · seen · taken · written |
| What it does | Marks an event as earlier than another past event | The plane had left when I arrived. |
| What it does not do | Move the story forward. It only reaches back | A story cannot be told entirely in it |
Three pairs. In each, decide what actually happened.
1. When I arrived, she left. What order?
2. When I arrived, she had left. What order?
3. Those two sentences differ by one word. What does that tell you about the tense?
Building the form
One to three words per gap. Every gap is past perfect, and most participles are irregular.
By the time we got to the hotel it was after midnight and they our room to somebody else. We three times to confirm it. The man on the desk said the booking at eight, which nobody us. My sister the confirmation email, so we could not even prove it.
Six sentences from real travel stories. One error each.
1. When I arrived at the gate, the plane already left.
2. I had went to the desk and asked.
3. She had not never been to Italy before that trip.
4. By the time we got there, they closed the restaurant.
5. He has left before I woke up.
6. We had booked the hotel and then we had arrived and then we had slept.
Two minutes on the worst day
Task card · Speaking · Diagnostic · 2 minutes each
Your worst travel day. Tell it to a partner who was not there.
Two minutes, told not in order — start at the moment you realised something was wrong.
- Open at the moment of discovery: the closed gate, the empty desk, the wrong platform.
- Then reach back and explain what had already happened.
- At least three things that were already true before you found out.
- Finish with what happened next, in order, in the past simple.
Listener’s job. Draw a horizontal line. As they speak, put each event on it in the order it happened, not the order you heard it.
If you cannot place an event, mark it with a question mark. Every question mark is a place the tense did not do its job.
What two minutes produced
Five sentences of the kind this task produces. Fix each.
1. When I got to the station, the train left ten minutes before.
2. I didn’t know that they cancelled it the day before.
3. By the time we found the hotel, it closed for the night.
4. I had lost my passport and then I had gone to the embassy and then they had helped me.
5. She had already ate when I got there.
When you need it
Three questions.
1. When do you need the past perfect?
2. When I arrived, she had left. Who was there first?
3. Can a whole story be told in the past perfect?
Before next lesson. Listen to one travel-narrative podcast episode. Write down three sentences the teller says that contain had plus a participle.
Three exactly. Then, beside each, write what the later event was — the thing it was reaching back from.