Hi

Perhaps it would be useful to use a previous sentence like: It took him a long time to make up his mind, and so, by the time he had made up his mind, she'd gone. Students need a past time reference before the past perfect ( It took him....)

She had gone by the time he had made up his mind. Why? Because he took a long time to make up his mind.

Does this make any sense?

Bye!

Hello Portoman!

Thank you for raising the "Past Perfect-Past Simple dilemma". I would like to say that when your students chose the answer you did not like them to, they were not, grammatically, wrong. On the contrary, it was the most suitable answer. Here you forgot the most important thing about which is the INTERCHANGEABILITY of tenses.  

            "By the time he made up his mind, she'd gone".

The sentence above is not grammatically wrong. It depends on what you focus on. To clarify it for you I should create a context for that:

Jane (had) loved John in 2009. She (had) asked him many times to marry but he (had been) was indifferent to her. He (had) abandoned her in October 2009. In November 2009, Tom (had) proposed to Jane and she (had) accepted. They (had) got married in December 2009 but John  (had not known) did not know that. Last week, John decided to marry Jane. Alias! Jane (had) got married.

Please note here that I used the Past Perfect tense between parentheses that means we could use the Past Simple instead. The Past Simple here is interchangeable with the Past Perfect. Re-read the example above twice; one time with the Past simple and another time with the Past Perfect and you will see that in this case the Past Simple is the more convenient here than The Past Perfect. But also the Past Perfect is possible ,too, without any impact on the meaning. This is what I meant by INTERCHANGEABILITY. Thus, your students were not wrong when they considered the following sentence grammatically wrong. That was because you did not (had not told) tell them about the INTERCHANGEABILITY of tenses.

                  "By the time he'd made up his mind, she'd gone".

They chose instead,

                   "By the time he made up his mind, she'd gone".

Just give your students this explanation and they will understand that. Tell them that in some cases we can use either this or that tense.

Below are some links about interchangeability of different tenses:

For example, the Present Perfect Simple is INTERCHANGEABLE with the Present Perfect Continuous.

           1)   http://www.english-the-easy   

                     way.com/Present_Tense/Present_Perfect_or_Present_Perfect_Continuous_Tense.htm

Future Continuous with Future Perfect Continuous:

           2)  http://www.englishpage.com/verbpage/futureperfectcontinuous.html

Past Perfect and  Past Simple

           3)  http://www.englishgrammarsecrets.com/pastperfect/exercise1.html (exercise 1).

           4) http://www.englishforums.com/English/BecausePastPerfect/hrhzd/post.htm

"By the time he'd made up his mind, she'd gone", is incorrect.

A lot of students said this was wrong when it was correct.

It is not correct. "By the time he made up his mind, she had gone", is correct.

However, a few disputed it as it didn't follow the rules we <had discussed> discussed nor follow the pattern of an earlier sentence i.e. "By the time the police arrived, the thief had left".

"had gone" is correct. The thief had gone. Consider: "By the time Sally got there, Tom had gone but he left the tickets with the bartender".

You're probably confusing yourself by thinking of it this way, "by the time + past perfect + past perfect" while the other has "by the time + past simple + past perfect".  rather than thinking about what is being said and what is meant.

Ridha,

When English verbs are used correctly, they are absolutely NOT interchangeable with verb tenses that are incorrect. I can't imagine where that erroneous idea was put into your head. Where did you get it?

"By the time he made up his mind, she'd gone". is correct usage of the past perfect.

"By the time he had made up his mind, she'd gone", puts 'had' in front of the past tense "made" and is not correct.

.brad.17nov10.

I see that both sentences are complete.

First, the "decision has already been made". And "her being gone" is a prior action to "making up his mind". So, the rule requires using the past perfect in the prior event in situations where two relatively joint actions appear.

Example: When I arrived to the bus station, the bus had already left. ( the bust left first, then I arrived)

It's advisable to use the adverb "already" in sentences like the above one to help out students understand the "perfect" tenses.

In my point of view, if we replace "by the time" with "when" , students may understand more. That's to say:

When he had made up his mind, she had (already) gone. (being gone happened first. Makaing up the mind happened later).

As a matter of fact, we come across this kind of "perfect" sentences more in classical novels written by such classical authors as Charles Dickens, Jane Austin, Thomas Hardy..etc

I hope I have kind of shed a light on this grammatical issue.