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  • 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 auxiliary 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.

  • I thank you for your attention. For regular updates please subscribe to

  • YouTube.com/englishgrammarspot or go to www.englishgrammarspot.com

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