Reflection 2

I told the students that there were 3 main tense forms used in narrative essays:

a) past continuous, often used when setting the scene, e.g. I was driving in the desert when I saw ...

b) simple past, the main form of the narrative, e.g. I saw, I ran, he was, they were.
c) past perfect, only rarely used. I pointed out that, when talking about 2 actions in the past, the past perfect is used for the first, or earlier, event:

When I got to the cinema, the film had already started.

The film had already started when I got to the cinema.


You can't simply say use the past perfect in the first or second part of the sentence, because the sentence can be swopped around, as above. You must think of the first, or earlier, action. This action, the start of the film in the above example, takes the past perfect.