By the time I arrived at the airport, the plane had already left.

In this example, had left is the past perfect tense.

The structure for the past perfect tense is had plus a past participle.

There are two past actions, arriving at the airport and the plane leaving.

But which of these happened first?

The clue is the past perfect tense.

The action in the past perfect is the action that always happens first.

Because the verb leave is in the past perfect, had left, we know that this action happened first.

The action that happens second is often in the past simple tense.

In this example, I arrived.

When you want to talk about two past actions, one which happened before the other, remember to use the past perfect for the first action and the past simple for the second.

Thanks for joining us for This English In A Minute.

Let's learn thought.

It's not just a past form of the verb think, it's also a noun, and this is where it gets interesting.

Unsurprisingly, it's all to do with things in our head.

As a countable noun, a thought can be an idea or a plan.

I've just had a thought.

We should go to the beach.

As a thought, let's order pizza.

As a plural noun, it can refer to our opinions or beliefs.

Here are my thoughts on how to run a business.

What are your thoughts on the right age to give a child a phone?

As an uncountable noun, it can refer to considering something carefully.

This is a difficult problem.

We need to give it some thought.

Sorry, this just doesn't work.

It needs more thought.

Thoughts happen in your brain.

They can be ideas, opinions or beliefs.

We also use it to refer to considering a problem.

It's easy to remember, you just have to give it some thought.

Sometimes we want to talk about something we thought would happen in the future at a point in the past.

We'll look at how to do this now.

To do this, we use past versions of future forms.

Will becomes would.

Yesterday I said I would go to the park.

Going to becomes was going to.

Like this.

The last time I saw you, you were going to start a new job.

What's it like?

The present continuous becomes the past continuous.

Last week you were visiting your family the day after I saw you.

How did it go?

So to recap, will becomes would, going to becomes was going to and the present continuous becomes the past continuous.

At the start, I said we'd look at how to talk about the future in the past.

And now we have.

Bye!

Hi, I'm Sam from BBC Learning English and today we are looking at the difference between no, not any and none.

Let's have a look.

Imagine you ask me this question.

Do you have any change?

I have zero change.

And I can say this in three different ways.

Sorry, I have no change.

Where we use the verb have with no followed by a noun.

Sorry, I don't have any change.

Where we use the negative don't followed by the verb followed by any followed by the noun.

Or I can say, sorry, none at all.

Where we use none without a verb or a noun, so it's a short answer.

So now you shouldn't have any problems with this.

Hi, I'm Phil and I'm going to tell you the difference between "all together" and "altogether."

Yes, they sound the same, but they're not.

Altogether, that's two words, and two L's means everything or everyone being or doing something together with everything or everyone else.

Let's sing all together or put the vegetables in the bowl and mix them all together.

Altogether that's one word and one L is an adverb and it means completely or entirely.

My brother has an altogether different personality to me.

He's nothing like me.

So if you have altogether as one complete word, it means completely or entirely.

And if we have altogether as two words, together, then that means everything or everyone together.

Hi, I'm Sam from BBC Learning English and today let's look at how we can change adjectives into nouns when talking about groups of people in general.

I'm from England and I can talk about people from my country in two ways.

English people talk about the weather a lot, where I use the adjective English to describe the noun people, or I can take the adjective English and turn it into a noun with the.

The English talk about the weather a lot.

You can use this rule to talk about other groups of people as well.

For example, the rich have more than the poor, but be careful, yes, the groups of people are plural and yes, the verb is plural, but we don't add S to the end of these words.

Hi everyone, welcome back to English in a Minute.

Today we're going to look at how to use modal verbs when making a deduction.

That's when we make guesses about what is happening.

Let's look at some examples.

Use must when you are certain or almost certain that something is true.

For example, Phil's hair is wet, it must be rainy.

Use can't to say when you are certain something is not true.

For example, Phil's hair is wet, it can't be sunny.

We can use might, may or could to talk about possibility.

Let's look at some examples.

Sam is late for work.

We don't know why Sam is late, but we can make a guess.

For example, her car could be broken.

Another possibility is, she might still be asleep.

One final possibility now, there may be a lot of traffic.

Well, it must be time to finish now.

Thanks for joining us, bye!

Hi guys, Tom here from BBC Learning English and...

I would rather be in bed today than be in the office.

We use would rather plus a verb to say what we would ideally prefer to do.

We can also use than to introduce a contrasting idea.

So, for example, I would rather drink tea than drink coffee.

And I would rather watch TV than do my homework.

So, practice time, what are you doing now?

And is there anything that you would rather be doing?

Let us know your ideas in the comments underneath the video.

Let's look at how to avoid confusion between me and I.

Now, the main difference is simple.

Use I when you're the subject of the clause and use me when you're the object.

Now, that's easy enough, but here's where it starts to get more complicated.

If you've got two people, say Sam and me, or should that be Sam and I?

Well, this question is most important in formal language, writing rather than speaking.

If you're using formal language, you need to think whether you're the subject or the object.

Sam and I are making a video.

Tom and I are getting coffee.

If you've got a problem, talk to Sam or me.

You're going to be working with me and Tom.

An easy way to check is to take out the other person.

Sorry, Sam.

Now, it should be easy to see that I should say, I'm making a video, or if you have a problem, talk to me.

So, just remember that you and I are subjects while the objects are me and you.

Hi everybody, I'm Sam and in this lesson, I'm going to talk about need.

Do you know the difference between needn't and not need to?

Look at these two sentences in the present.

Is the meaning the same or different?

You don't need to worry about the exam, you've studied lots.

You needn't worry about the exam, you've studied lots.

They're the same, right?

Maybe needn't is a little bit more formal, but the meaning is that there is no necessity for you to worry.

Now, look at these two sentences in the past.

He didn't need to worry about the exam, he had already passed the course.

He needn't have worried about the exam, it was really easy.

These are different.

In the first sentence, he had already passed the course, so he knew he didn't need to worry.

In the second sentence, he didn't know the exam was going to be easy, so he was worried, but he needn't have been.