Past Perfect Continuous Tense
I had been singing
How do we make the Past Perfect Continuous Tense?
Quote:
The structure of the past perfect continuous tense is:
subject + auxiliary verb HAVE + auxiliary verb BE (Past Participle)+ main verb (Present Participle or V3)
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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
+ _____ I __________ had ___________ been ___________ working.
+ ____You __________ had ___________ been __________ playing tennis.
- _____ It _________ had not __________ been __________ working well.
- _____ We ________ had not __________ been __________ expecting her.
? _____ 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 _____ he'd been
she had 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.
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.
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."
to be continued (Future Simple Tense)