Join EnglishTopVN to immediately learn important knowledge about PAST PERFECT CONTINUOUS tense with formulas, signs, and exercises with detailed answers. Besides, you need to practice the past perfect continuous tense to consolidate your knowledge for all tests.
Past perfect continuous tense is a tense used to express aaction that was happening in the past but ends before another action,That action also ended in the past. Past perfect continuous describes the exactness of actions that have occurred.
In there:
S + had + been + V-ing
✎ NOTE: "been" always comes after "had".
For example:
S + had + not + been + V-ing
✎ NOTE: We just need to add "not" right after the auxiliary verb "had" and we can write "had not" as "hadn't".
For example:
Had + S + been + V-ing ?
Reply:
✎ NOTE:
For example:
The present perfect continuous is used in many different situations. Here are some common uses:
3.1. Used to describe an action that occursContinuously before another action in the past
Yesterday, when I got up, it was snowing. It had been snowing for three hours.
In fact, the action that it was snowing happened continuously before another action yesterday, "when I woke up".
3.2. Used to describe an action that happened continuously before a specific time in the past
His son had been driving for five hours before 9p.m last night
The act of driving for 5 hours happened continuously before a specifically determined time: 9pm last night.
3.3. Used to emphasize actions with results left in the past
This morning he was very tired because he had been working very hard all night.
Being “tired” happened in the past and was the result of “working hard all night” that happened before.
For the past perfect continuous tense, in the sentence there will be words used to identify as follows: Until then
For example:
Until then I had been leaving Danang for 4 years:
➣ By the time
By the time she came back he had been sleeping for five hours.
➣ Prior to that time