Having + past participle - Unit 03

Having plus past participle means that someone's referred to have done the action of the verb. We use when we are talking about something that we have done.

example:
             Having lived in New York. She knows a lot about the culture.

It means that She has lived in New York, for that reason she knows about the culture.

We can use having plus past participle when we want to show a sequence, it is used in active and passive voice.

example:

		participle form	example
simultaneous action	active	present participle (ing-form)	Holding the hair-dryer in her left hand, she cut her hair.
	passive	past participle (3rd verb form)	Blown by the hair-dryer, her hair could easily be cut.
sequential action	active	perfect participle (having + 3rd verb form)	Having washed her hair, she cut it.
	passive	perfect participle (having been + 3rd verb form)	Having been cut, her hair looked strange.

Having washed her hair, she cut it. 

This sentence means that first she washed her hair, after washing it, she cut it. In this example there are sequential actions. "having washed her hair" was the first action in the sentence... "she cut it" occurred after..

Reflections

Having plus past participle is a different way to say that an action was finished, before another. Having plus past participle is really used for the Americans, is a shorter way to implement past perfect, in a sentence. As any tense it has active and passive voice, so, people can use in many scenarios.

In my personal experience sometimes is difficult try to implement "having + past participle" in my sentences, but if we practice it, we can use it more in differents context... and improve the level of our english. "having" doesn´t have a difficult structure, so, I guess it is easy to implement in our speech.