Lisa Ralph, UK
Tell a story in chronological order. Then ask your student to retell the story but begin backwards
For example, chronological order:

• Dave got up late.
• He didn't have time for breakfast.
• He ran for the bus he missed it.
• He arrived late for work again.
• The boss sacked him. Poor Dave; it just wasn't his day.

• "Dave got the sack the yesterday."
• "How come?"
• "Well, he had got up late. He'd missed the bus and had arrived for work late again..."

Jokes are often told this way. Headway upper intermediate has a good chapter on Past Perfect using a joke although it's a little difficult and by the time the student understands (the tenth replay!) it isn't so funny, but it's a good idea all the same.

Jimena del Azar, Canada
The Past Perfect can also be referred to as "the past of the past" and that usually makes a lot of sense to students. The fact that it portrays a past action that happened before another action in the past can be easily shown on a time-line. You can also use a short story and ask students to put the events of the story in order and then write sentences using the past perfect to show what happened first.

You can also ask students to do something similar with different things that have happened in their own life. After putting them in a time line they can write sentences with the correct tenses about their own or another student in the class if they work in pairs (for it to be a bit more communicative.)

If your students are older and/or wouldn't like to share their personal life in class, you can also use some historical events that are meaningful to where they live or where they're studying English ... it's easy to tie in culture with this as well and it becomes more interesting and meaningful too. Hope this helps!

Liora Tamir, Israel
I think you first have to explain the very notion of this Tense. If you have it in your native language - compare with it. If not - give an example like this: Yesterday I met my friend and he told me that he had done something. I usually give some example of terrible (criminal) things. In this way the pupils remember the situation. By the way, in contrast to other Tenses, this is a very logical one, easily explained.

Zoe Vaiou, Greece
Hello melissa! You may use Time Lines to teach Past Perfect Simple / Continuous;actually, it's very useful to use time lines to teach all tenses. It's easier for Ss to remember the tenses with the help of time lines.Of course they should be accompanied by texts and lots of examples given by you or as production by them. Good Luck!

Janda, Italy
Hi Melissa,
I teach English in Italy, but I'm Brazilian. I usually introduce the activity with a picture. For example: a woman driving a car. Then I write a serie of sentences (using past tense) on the blackboard. All the sentences emphasize what the woman had done before that moment. Students should put the sentences in the correct order. Then I highlight the difference between past simple and past perfect.

John Maher, United Kingdom
I use a short sequence of pictures to teach the relationship of the tenses, especially the perfect ones.
Man sitting on bed. What is he doing? [He is sitting on the bed] What has he done? [He has heard the alarm clock. He has woken up]. The sequence is then transferred to the past. What was he doing at 7.00 yesterday morning? [He was sitting on the bed] What had he done? [He had heard the alarm clock]

Françoise Pistre, France
When I get to past perfect (we now say : past-HAVE V-EN here) I have that story of a photographer who succeeded in taking a photo of a famous ex-actress who lived in complete isolation and whose house was in the middle of a field surrounded by...a rail way.

I provide my students a "map" of the house and the surroundings. And I also give the detailed schedule imagined by the photographer. The plot is such :

After taking that unique photo (we call it a "scoop" in France), the photographer became rich and famous but he always refused to reveal how he managed to take the photo.

Years after the photographer's death, his great grand-son found his great grand-father's diary in the attic. And he discovered how his family became rich.

He then decided to write an account of the events, using the map and the schedule: (schedule : 9.59 : train leaves station ; 10.14, train gets into tunnel ; 10.16 : train gets out of tunnel ;... ; 10.20 : jump into the garden ; 10.22 : run across the garden to the kitchen window ; 10.25 : take photo...)

Account : Well, here is how we became a rich family! - On that particular day, by 10.00, my great grand-father's train had left the station, by 10.15, it had got into the tunnel...."

The idea is to get the students to recap what had happened by such and such a time. It can be adapted to a famous robbery, a murder committed in unknown circumstances that were to be discovered long after the facts. This is not to let them find out how to "build" a past perfect, but to have them use it in situation.

George Steed
Good Question. Explain past tense. Explain perfect (also simple). Supply short examples. Query students to be sure they understand terminology. Prepare some past perfect sentences . Show them. Now request students to do the same. A completed lesson plan will allow you to keep on course. Involve the students. Make sure each can supply a past perfect sentence.

There is a further complication. A careful application of the rule would lead learners to produce some forms like I opened the door when the postman had knocked, which are distinctly odd, if not ungrammatical. It is virtually impossible to frame a rule which will enable learners to make an appropriate choice between the past simple and present perfect in all contexts. Hughes and McCarthy go on to draw the conclusion that:

The rule, therefore … does not offer sufficiently precise guidelines to generate the choice when appropriate. In situations such as this our proposal is to look at the choices that real speakers and writers have made in real contexts and consider the contextual features that apparently motivated one choice or the other. (Hughes and McCarthy 1998:268)

Contextual features and speaker’s choice tend to be rather more subtle than hard and fast rules.

It seems then that instead of saying ‘the past perfect tense is used for an event that happened in past time before another past time…’ we need to say ‘that the past perfect tense may be used for an event that happened in past time before another past time…’ In other words if an event happened in a past time before another past time we have a choice between the past perfect and the past simple. What makes grammar so difficult is that it’s not just about following rules, it’s about making choices.

So what does this imply in terms of teaching? I think first learners need to come across the tense in use. They need to see it used in text, perhaps in a narrative context, and teachers need to draw their attention to it. The next stage is to offer some kind of controlled practice. For example:

The next, and most difficult stage is to follow Carter and McCarthy and ‘look at the choices that real speakers and writers have made in real contexts’. This means looking at text. You could, for example, take two paragraphs from a story learners have already read. This particular story is about a boy who got locked in a butcher’s cold store overnight:

Staff arriving for work at the Wood Street shop found him  yesterday morning with his teeth chattering and his face purple with cold. Still freezing, Peter immediately telephoned his parents, who had reported him missing to the police.

Peter, who lives in Banbury Road, Stratford, said: "I help out at the shop after school and I had gone into the cold store just before closing time. I was behind a big food shelf when the door locked behind me.

Remove all the verbs:

Staff __________ for work at the Wood Street shop _________ him  yesterday morning with his teeth ___________ and his face purple with cold. Still ________, Peter immediately ___________ his parents, who __________ him __________ to the police.

Peter, who ________ in Banbury Road, Stratford, ________: "I __________ out at the shop after school and I __________  into the cold store just before closing time. I was behind a big food shelf when the door __________ behind me.

and ask learners to replace them.

There are many other ways of getting learners to work with context in this way. The important thing about this kind of work is that it highlights the choices that language users make rather than simply giving rules which don’t always work and which can sometimes get in the way of language use.

Ref:

Hughes R. and McCarthy M. 1998. From Sentence to Discourse: Discourse Grammar and English Language Teaching. TESOL Quarterly 32/2.

Willis D. and Wright J 1995 Collins COBUILD Basic Grammar