Past Perfect Continuous Tense - Websteach

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Past Perfect Continuous Tense

I had been singing

How do we make the Past Perfect Continuous Tense?

The structure of the past perfect continuous tense is:

Subject	+	Auxiliary Verb HAVE	+	Auxiliary Verb BE	+	Main Verb
	conjugated in simple past tense			past participle		present participle
	had			been		base + ing

For negative sentences in the past perfect continuous tense, we insert not after the first auxiliary verb. For question sentences, we exchange the subject and first auxiliary verb. Look at these example sentences with the past perfect continuous tense:

	Subject	Auxiliary Verb		Auxiliary Verb	Main Verb
POSITIVE	I	had		been	working.
	You	had		been	playing	tennis.
NEGATIVE	It	had	not	been	working	well.
	We	had	not	been	expecting	her.
QUESTIONS	Had	you		been	drinking?
	Had	they		been	waiting	long?

When speaking with the past perfect continuous tense, we often contract the subject and first auxiliary verb:

I had been	I’d been
you had been	you’d been
he had/she had been	he’d been/ she’d been
it had been	it’d been
we had been	we’d been
they had been	they’d been

How do we use the Past Perfect Continuous Tense?

The past perfect continuous tense is like the past perfect tense, but it expresses longer actions in the past before another action in the past. For example:

 

• Ram started waiting at 9am. I arrived at 11am. When I arrived, Ram had been waiting for two hours.

Ram had been waiting for two hours when I arrived.
past	present	future
Ram starts waiting in past at 9am.
9                     11
I arrive in past at 11am.

Here are some more examples:

• John was very tired. He had been running.



• I could smell cigarettes. Somebody had been smoking.



• Suddenly, my car broke down. I was not surprised. It had not been running well for a long time.



• Had the pilot been drinking before the crash?

You can sometimes think of the past perfect continuous tense like the present perfect continuous tense, but instead of the time being now the time is past.

past perfect continuous tense     present perfect continuous tense

had   | |                                                                                        | have |

been |  |                                                                                        | been |

doing |  |                                                                                        | doing |

>>>> |   |                                                                                       |>>>>

past           now       future                                   past         now            future

For example, imagine that you meet Ram at 11am. Ram says to you:

• “I am angry. I have been waiting for two hours.”

Later, you tell your friends:

• “Ram was angry. He had been waiting for two hours.”

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Prepared By JIMMY RAPPER

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Past Perfect Continuous Tense - Websteach