Name: Basic English Grammar Course | Past Perfect Continuous Tense | Learn and Practice
Uploaded: 2020-11-19T19:15:55.000Z
Duration: 13 min 18 s
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Future simple

In this video, I will introduce the past perfect continuous tense.

It's a great tense that helps you express an ongoing action

in the past continuing up to another point in the past.

There's a lot to learn, so keep watching.

One usage of the past perfect continuous tense is to talk about an ongoing action in the

past that continued up to another point in the

You can use 'for' and a duration to talk about

'I had been waiting for the bus for two hours before it arrived.'

It doesn't matter what the subject is, we follow with 'had been'.

For example, 'I had been', 'Chuck had been',

Now this is the ongoing action that happened first.

Again, four and two hours shows the duration.

It's the action that this first action happened until this action happened,

so again, 'I had been waiting for the bus,' happened

And then, it happened until the bus arrived.

'Chuck had been cooking,' Again, that part's easy.

No matter what's the subject, we say 'had been' and then verb '-ing'.

Again, I can show how long Chuck had been cooking by saying 'for an hour', showing

And then, I finished by saying, 'before he finished'.

He had been cooking up to this point in the past.

Finally, 'Tom and Kim had been walking,' This part should be familiar to you by now,

'for an hour' Again, that shows duration.

So they had been walking for an hour before they took a break.

The past perfect continuous tense is also used to express cause and effect in the

The verb that's in the past perfect continuous tense shows the cause,

We can use 'because' or 'so' to show the cause and effect.

'Jason was tired because he had been jogging.'

The first part of the sentence is in the past tense.

'Jason was tired,' However, we see 'why?'

The second part of this sentence is in the past perfect continuous tense.

'he had been', remember no matter what the subject,

we follow with 'had been' and jogging – 'verb -ing'.

'he had been jogging' This shows why Jason was tired.

The next sentence says, 'The pavement' or it 'was wet because

Similar to the first sentence, 'it had been raining' shows the cause.

'The pavement was wet because it had been raining.'

In this sentence, we see a little difference.

'The children had been playing' Again, this is the past perfect continuous

'had been playing' The second part says, 'the room was a mess'.

So here, instead of 'because' like the first two sentences,

So the order has been changed but the meaning is the same.

This, 'the children had been playing' is why the room was a mess.

This is the cause and this is the effect.

Now let's go into the negative form of the past perfect continuous tense.

'I had not been working for a day before I quit.'

So no matter what the subject 'I', 'you', 'she', or 'it',

just like in the affirmative, we say 'had', but after the 'had', in the negative form,

'had not' or you can use the contraction 'hadn't'.

Which is a combination of 'had' and 'not' together.

'I had not been working' The rest of the sentence is the same.

'been + verb -ing' 'I had not been working for a day before

The next sentence says, 'You had not been cutting onions for long

Again, the 'not' goes between 'had' and 'been'.

'She hadn't been studying for long when she fell asleep.'

And finally, 'It hadn't been snowing for long when it

Again, we have the contraction for 'had not' here.

You'll notice that in the first two sentences, I used 'before'.

Either one can be used to show when the first action stopped.

Now let's go into how to form basic questions in the past perfect continuous tense.

'He had been driving all day before he arrived.'

Now, to turn this into a question, all we have to do is change the order of the first

Instead of 'He had', now I can say, 'Had he', in order to form a question.

'Had he been driving all day before he arrived?'

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Basic English Grammar Course | Past Perfect Continuous Tense | Learn and Practice

pattern

matter

negative

mess