Which of theses two is correct?
a. School year has just started.
b. School year had just started.
thanks!
Hi Aimz,
You need the word ‘the’ in both sentences.
a. The school year has just started.
This sentence is correct. It would typically be used to say that the school year began very recently, so the students are currently at the beginning of the school year. The broader context is likely to contain a lot of present verb forms.
b. The school year had just started.
Technically, this sentence is also correct. However, because it uses the past perfect (had started), there must be justification for this in the broader context. The use of the past perfect in this sentence means that there is some need to make it clear that ‘had started’ happened before some other past event – a past event that was probably mentioned in the previous sentence. For example:
Johnny told his parents that he didn’t want to go to school because he hated all of his classes and all of his classmates. The school year had just started, and his parents were concerned by his reaction.
The words ‘told’, ‘didn’t want’, and ‘hated’ are all simple past tense. Because ‘started’ happened before those happened, we use ‘had started’ to make that clear.
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[size=75]“You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.” ~ Henry Ford[/size]