Welcome to englishgrammarspot.
This tutorial is about the past perfect continuous.
In this lesson I am going to show you how to
form a past perfect continuous and when to use a past perfect continuous.
Now let's get started.
Take a look at these sentences:
I had been working a lot.
It had been snowing.
They are both in the past perfect continuous tense.
How do we form a past perfect continuous?
we use the auxiliiary verb to have, but we use the past form so 'had.'
We use the past participle form of 'to be', been
and the base form of the verb and 'ing.' So for the singular forms:
I had been working all afternoon.
You had been listening to the radio.
He had been sweeping the floor.
She had been spending a lot of money.
and it had been raining all week.
For the plural forms:
We had been playing computer games all night.
You had been searching for a supermarket.
and they had been watching the news all afternoon.
We need to pay special attention to verbs that end in an '-e' such as live, make
close and wipe.
These verbs drop their '-e' take a look at the examples:
I had been living there for quite some time.
He had been making a lot of noise and they had been wiping the floor for over an hour.
Let's have a look at the past perfect continuous in questions. We use had,
we use been,
the base from of the verb and 'ing.' For example:
Had she been talking about him?
Had you been playing tennis and had they been doing their job.
For negations we use the past simple form of have which is
had, but we add not to it contracting it into hadn't
and the past participle form of to be
the base form of the verb and 'ing.'
I hadn't been listening to the news.
she hadn't been waiting for you for over an hour
and they hadn't been paying attention.
Now let's have a look at when we use the past perfect continuous.
We use the past perfect continuous for activities that started in the past but
before something else in the past.
For example:
I had been travelling before I met her.
So I started traveling in the past, which lasted for some time and then I met
a specific person.
All these things were completed in the past.
Another example is: They had been working as a chauffeur before ore taking a job as a doorman.
So first they worked as a chauffeur for quite some time,
and then they took another job.
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