General Procedures in Teaching Grammar
The other past habitual form uses the auxiliary verb would which has other uses as well. For example, Last June I would go there daily. When
this form is used, it must be accompanied by an explicit time frame so for example I would go there. does not occur unless the time frame has
already been specified. This form is negated as in Last June I would not go there daily, and it is made interrogative as in Last June, would you go
there daily?
4. The Past Perfect Tense
The past perfect is formed by combining the simple past form of “to have”
with the past participle form of the main verb: We had shouted. This form conveys that an action occurred before a specified time in the past, so it is
actually the past of the past tense. A negation is achieved by including not after had: You had not spoken. Questions in past perfect always start with
had: Had he laughed?
5. The Past Perfect Progressive Tense
The past perfect progressive is formed by “had”, “been” and the present
participle of the main verb: You had been waiting. This form describes action which happened in continuous fashion prior to sometime in the past.
For negation, not is included before been: I had not been waiting. A question sentence is formed by starting with had: Had she been waiting? If
emphasis is put on the duration of an action that continued to the reference time in the past,
“since” and “for” are signal words for the past perfect progressive: We had been waiting at the airport since the 9 P.M. flight; We
had been waiting there for three hours.
Of all kinds of past tense above, the writer only used simple past tense in the materials given to the classes in which the research was conducted.