Exercise 1
Read the following information about famous moments in history. Then underline the correct form. Only one verb in each paragraph is past perfect.
A. Columbus left Spain in August 1492 with three ships, to try and find a way to India by sailing west instead of east. When his ships had finally reached land on 12 October, he thought he was there, but the ships actually arrived in America instead.
B. Captain Robert Scott wanted to reach the South Pole first. He and his companions finally arrived there on 1 January 1912 after a terrible journey across the ice, but had found a Norwegian flag. Unfortunately for Scott, Roald Amundsen got there on 14 December, 18 days earlier.
C. Leonardo painted his famous The Last Supper between 1495 and 1498, but the painting started to deteriorate within 50 years. The most common explanation for this used to be that Leonardo had used the wrong kind of paint, but experts have always disagreed about this, and many believe that the damp in the wall is the cause of the damage. Between 1978 and 1999, experts restored the painting, and the public can now see it again.
Complete the sentence with the past simple or past perfect simple form of the verb in brackets.
1. When I tried to use my laptop, I realized the battery had run down.
2. I turned the computer off, but forgot that I hadn’t saved my work.
3. I had only remembered the bill when my Internet connection stopped working.
4. When I received the e-mail, I couldn’t understand who had sent it.
5. When I checked the instructions, I understood what I had done.
6. I knew I had received a virus when I ran the anti-virus program.
7. As soon as I downloaded the document, I knew I had made a mistake.
8. I could see what had gone wrong as soon as I looked inside the printer.
9. I pressed the wrong key when nothing had happened.
10. When the screen went blank, I couldn’t understand how it had happened.
Exercise 3
Read these sentences about Julius Caesar. Then complete the sentence with the past simple or past perfect form of the verb in brackets.
a) Julius Caesar came from an aristocratic Roman family, though his family was not rich by Roman standards.
b) When he was 15 his father died, and to avoid political problems in Rome, Caesar served as a soldier in the east.
c) By the time he returned to Rome, he had won awards for bravery.
d) He became a member of the Senate, and governor of what is now Spain.
e) By the age of 40 he had risen to the top of the political world, and formed a political alliance with a powerful general, Pompey, and a rich man, Crassus.
f) Between 58 BC and 49 BC he fought a war against the people of what are now France, Belgium, Switzerland and parts of Germany.
g) By the end of this war, according to the historian Plutarch, three million men had died.
h) In 50 BC the Senate ordered Caesar to return to Rome. By that time, Crassus was dead and Pompey had become Caesar’s enemy.
i) In the civil war that followed, Caesar defeated all his enemies.
j) By the time a group of Roman senators murdered him in 44 BC, he had been the most powerful man in Rome for only a year.
Exercise 4
Choose the correct form, A, B, or C, to complete the sentence.
On 26 December 2004, Tilly Smith, a 10-year-old British schoolgirl, was walking on the beach with her family. They were spending Christmas in Thailand. Suddenly Tilly felt that something was wrong. She could see that the water was rising and waves were coming up the beach. The beach was getting smaller and smaller. She knew that there had been an earthquake in Sumatra that morning, but she had had a geography lesson she had attended at school just two weeks before.
So she told her mother what she had learned about earthquakes and giant waves. Luckily for the Smith family, Tilly’s teacher Andrew Kearney had taught the class about earthquakes and had shown them a video of a tsunami in Hawaii. Tilly started screaming at her parents to get off the beach. They took Tilly back to their hotel, which was not too close to the shore, and raised the alarm. One of the staff, who was Japanese, understood the word tsunami, and ordered everyone to leave the beach. From their room on the third floor, the Smiths watched the terrible effects of the tsunami on the area. Thanks to Tilly, everybody from that beach survived that terrible day.
Exercise 5
Read the story of Archimedes and his bath. Then complete the text with the correct form of the verb in brackets.
Archimedes, the Greek mathematician, is probably most famous for the story of King Hieron II of Syracuse and the gold crown. The king wanted to give a gold crown as a gift to the gods, and he gave a carefully weighed amount of gold to a goldsmith. The man produced a beautiful crown, but the king was worried that the craftsman had not used all the gold to make the crown. Dishonest craftsmen often mixed gold with silver, which was cheaper, but the king could not find a way of proving that the man had done this. He asked Archimedes to solve the problem. Archimedes knew that gold and silver have different densities. The problem was that nobody could calculate the mass of an object like a crown. While Archimedes was thinking about this problem, he decided to go to the public baths to relax. While he was climbing into the bath, he noticed some water on the floor. It spilled over the side of the bath, and he realized that he had solved the problem by accident. The total amount of water that spilled out of the bath must be the same as the volume of his body. He could use a piece of pure gold and calculate its volume, and then test the crown and see if it was the same. According to the story, he jumped straight out of the bath and ran down the street calling “Eureka – I’ve found it.” The goldsmith soon admitted that he had cheated the king, and was punished. Archimedes discovered a principle of buoyancy.
Exercise 6
Read the sentences about two mountain climbers. Then complete the sentence with the past perfect simple or past perfect continuous form of the verb in brackets.
a) The two climbers stopped to rest. They had been climbing for hours and were exhausted. Things were not looking good.
b) They were very cold, because it had been snowing heavily since mid-morning, and one of them had hurt his ankle.
c) They had been looking for shelter for the past two hours, because they realized that the weather was going to get worse.
d) They had already phoned the rescue centre for help.
e) They had also left details of their planned route at the village where they stayed the night.
f) They were experienced climbers and they had prepared carefully for their
trip. They knew there was a cave halfway up the mountain.
g) They spent a long time searching for the cave before they realized that they had been heading in the wrong direction. Then the snow stopped, and they could see the dark entrance of the cave nearby.
h) Luckily they had brought warm clothes and plenty of food with them, and they waited safely in the cave.
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