Even before we met him in person, we had noticed how old he had become
=> Is the above sentence right or wrong? (because there is “had noticed”, I think the verb “become” can’t be in past tense only, but if there are 2 verbs in past participle, is it all right?
Hi Nessie
The verb tense you’re referring to is called ‘the past perfect’.
In your sentence it would be perfectly OK to say ‘we noticed how old he had become’ because the word ‘before’ makes the sequence clear (i.e. you noticed something before you met him).
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Hi Amy,
Thanks a lot for your help and so… my original sentence is not grammatically correct?
Isn’t the past perfect an aspect and not a tense?
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As I’m sure you know, Molly, things such as the ‘present perfect’ and the ‘past perfect’ are frequently referred to as ‘tenses’ even though linguists will tell you that they’re technically not ‘tenses’ per se.
However, I think you’ll also agree that nobody refers to (or should refer to) ‘had noticed’ or ‘had become’ as ‘the past participle’.
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Surprisingly, when I was chatting on ICQ (an internet jabber program) with an American teen, I asked this question: “when do you use the past simple and present perfect tenses” and the reply was “there’s no such thing as perfect tenses, you can have a perfect body, but perfect does not refer to grammatical tenses at all”.
Hi Alex
I hope you asked him if he knew what a ‘perfect infinitive’ was. :lol:
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I never refer to them as tenses. Why do you?
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One reason is simply to avoid confusion – since the vast majority of my students have been taught that the present perfect, for example, is a ‘tense’. My students are not linguists. They simply need to be able to write, speak, listen and read in English.
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I’d say being taught about aspects is of benefit to those who want to understanding English usage. If you want to avoid confusion why not drop the word “tense” altogether? Just talk about the past simple, present simple, present perfect, etc.
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Most of the time I just say ‘the present perfect’ or ‘the simple past’ and so on.
In my experience, however, linguistic jargon is mainly useful for linguists. For the average person doing a once-a-week English course at work, for example, the last thing they want to spend (waste) time on is “official” linguistic terminology and jargon. I would lose customers if I did that. Such students get along just fine with what they have already learned to be the names of ‘tenses’ in English.
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Yeah, I agree with Amy. The last thing I would like to be doing in class is to be learning linguistic mambo-jambo. I (and most people who’s learning English) just wish to speak the language. I’m really not into linguistics 
And the ones who haven’t yet learned such? What would you teach those? And, do you also not teach the terms mood, voice and person?
Does that include not wanting to learn the terms mood, voice and person?
And why do we have choices such as these?
I was living in London for five years.
I lived in London for five years.
How can the word “tense” help me make a choice between those?
Well, I learnt them in school, but in the school where I studied, our English teacher sucked like a vacuum cleaner. She didn’t want to teach us, instead all she did was put us down for every little mistake. I didn’t like her, in a word.
But I’m going off on a tangent. Back to the point, I have a friend from the USA and he knows little about English grammar but this does not impede his ability to speak better than me, a guy who can tell “its” from “it’s”, “they’re” from “their” (he sometimes can’t, by the way).
And why do we have choices such as these?
I was living in London for five years.
I lived in London for five years.
How can the word “tense” help me make a choice between those?
It’s not the word “tense” that should help you, it’s the word “CONTEXT”. You need to learn in which context you use which, that’s the ticket. 
Children learn language in context, they don’t ascribe names to constructions they use. If they want icecream, they don’t rack their brains trying to come up with the right tense, they just say “I want an icecream” without even som mush as thinging about the present simple and the rule how to conjugate the verb “to want”.
Molly, I don’t have any absolute beginners, but with all of the information about ‘tenses’ that is to be found in grammar books and on online ESL sites, why in the world should I worry about whether or not I call the present perfect or the present continuous a ‘tense’? Heck, when even grammar experts such as Thomson & Martinet and Murphy refer to “I am going” as a ‘tense’, why should I argue? Let’s get real.
englishclub.com/grammar/verb-tenses.htm
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So there’s no need for the word tense in an ESL classroom at all, right? To me, the conflation of tense and aspect may be fine for those ESL students and teachers whose 1st language has an Indo-European root, but for those whose 1st language may be one of the modern Slavic languages or Greek, where tense and aspect are generally independent, teaching only the word tense may cause confusion and extra work for the student.
I think most of the need to conflate aspect and tense in modern ESL classrooms may stem from the teacher’s inability to explain aspect.
As a slight aside, how does a teacher explain the difference in choice here - apart from saying that one is BrEng and the other AmEng?
Have you eaten yet?
Did you eat yet?
And here:
I had eaten before I arrived.
A little while after we had eaten, Jake arrived.
Is it only tense that is involved in the first example? Can you explain that example away with the word “tense”?