Today, we're going to look at the past perfect continuous. It's one of those grammar points
that scares people. Whenever, I say the past perfect continuous in class, students, roll
there eyes, play with their phones or make an excuse and go to the bathroom. But let
me tell it's super easy, and knowing it will really help your English speaking skills and
by the end of this video you'll be using it naturally so if you want to know more
then stay tuned.
I met her in a bar room, her name I didn't
catch, she looked like something special, the kind who'd understand
I'd been talking to her for almost an hour
she told me she'd been coming to Albarone's for months but I'd never seen her there. She
asked me what I did and I told her that I'd been working as a barista in city of London
Suddenly she became really interested.
She told me she'd been having problems with her boss and she wanted ME to take him to
court and sue him for something like a million pounds.
I thought she was drunk
She had been drinking pina coladas all evening. Then I realized the misunderstanding.
She thought that I was a BARRISTER
which is a type of lawyer in Britain you know those with the funny wigs
but in fact I was a BARISTA which is a fancy name for aguy that makes coffee in those
espresso bars. When I told her that she got upset and walked away.
But Later that evening, when I left the club
I saw her outside. She told me that she had been waiting for me for half and hour.
Her hair was wet because it had been raining.
"What shall we do now" she asked?
"Let's go back to my place for a cup of coffee" I replied
"I don't think I should" she said "I might regret it".
"You won't regret sweetheart" I said
"I make great coffee, I'm a Barista"...
So today we're going to look at the past perfect continuous.
It looks complicated but you'll soon see that the explanation is simple
and in just a few minutes you'll know it very well. We'll start by looking at the structure.
You will need the past perfect of the verb to be - that's had + been, plus verb + ing.
So when do we use it. We use the Past Perfect Continuous to show
that something started in the past and continued to another point in the past.
We use it to talk about the continuation of an action in the past. You'll often use it
with "for" when you want to say for how long something happened . This grammar is related
to the present perfect continuous but here the action takes place from one point in the
past to another point in the past and not to the present. Let's look at some examples.
She had been waiting for him for half an hour
He had been hitchhiking for 2 hours before he got a lift.
For the negative just use had not or hadn't. She hadn't been following the map and was
competely lost. And we often use it in reported speech too.
he told his parents he'd been doing his homework.
They said they'd been learning English at LetThemTalk
We often use the past perfect continuous to give explanations as to why things happened
in the past. For example
Her hair was wet because it had been raining He was late because he had been walking slowly
She had blood on her hands because she had been chopping vegetables.
Now it's your turn. Look at the photo Finish the sentence with an explanation
She was exhausted because....
He couldn't sleep because
He was getting fat because...
Ok two things you need to be careful about. Firstly don't confuse the past perfect continuous
with the past continuous. Look at these two sentences.
When I entered the bar she was drinking a cocktail.
She was drinking at a certain moment so we use the past continuous
She had been drinking cocktails all evening and was feeling a little drunk.
This emphases the duration of the drinking. The action began at an earlier time and continued.
so we must use the past perfect continuous.
One final point, there are some verbs that cannot be used in any continuous tense. These
are called "stative verbs" because they describe a state rather than an action. "to know",
for example is a stative verb. So in a sentence you would say. "I had known him for 5 years
before we moved in together" and not "I had been knowing him...." I'll leave a link in
the description for a list of stative verbs.
Ok that's it so if you'd been thinking that was going to be difficult you see it was actually quite easy
Thank you for watching more English language videos coming soon.