LoginPast Perfect Continuous
This detailed lesson dives into the Past Perfect Continuous Tense in English, featuring examples and a quiz to test your knowledge.
What Is Past Perfect Continuous Tense?
The Past Perfect Continuous emphasizes ongoing past actions that continued up to another point in the past. It highlights duration or cause-and-effect relationships between two past events.
Past Perfect Continuous: Structure
The past perfect continuous is comprised of the past simple of the auxiliary verb 'have' (i.e. had), the past participle form of the auxiliary verb 'be' (i.e. been) and the present participle form of the main verb.
Past form of Have | Past Participle of Be | Present Participle of Verb | |
|---|---|---|---|
All Subjects | had | been | verb + ing |
When we use the past perfect continuous tense in speaking, we often contract the first auxiliary verb (had). For example:
I had been working. → I'd been working.
He had been playing football. → He'd been playing football.
Past Perfect Continuous: Negation
To negative sentences, 'not' is added after the first auxiliary verb (i.e. had). Check out the following examples:
He had been working well. → He had not been working well.
I had been waiting for her. → I had not been waiting for her.
In negative sentences, we can contract the negative marker 'not.' See the examples:
He had not been working well. → He hadn't been working well.
I had not been waiting for her. →I hadn't been waiting for her.
Past Perfect Continuous: Questions
To make yes/no questions, we put 'had' at the beginning of the sentence, before the subject, and the rest of the sentence remains unchanged. Look at the examples below.
She had been working. → Had she been working?
They had been waiting for long. → Had they been waiting for long?
To make wh- questions, add the proper wh-word at the beginning of the sentence and then invert the subject and the first auxiliary, just like yes/no questions. See the examples.
He had been working in London. → Where had he been working?
She had been reading 'Gone with the Wind.' → What had she been reading?
Past Perfect Continuous: Uses
The past perfect continuous tense is used to talk about:
Duration Before a Past Moment
Interrupted Actions
Repeated Actions over a Period of Time
Cause of a Past Result
Temporary States
Duration Before a Past Moment
We use the 'past perfect continuous tense' for something that started in the past and continued up to a given time in the past. In this case, the past perfect continuous tense emphasizes how long an action had been happening before another past event. Check out the examples.
She had been working for 12 hours when she finally took a break.
Everything was white. It had been snowing for hours.
Interrupted Actions
We use the 'past perfect continuous' tense to talk about an ongoing action that was stopped by another past event. For example:
They had been arguing before the phone rang.
He had been trying to open the door for ten minutes when he found the keys.
Repeated Actions over a Period of Time
The past perfect continuous can also refer to an action that is repeated over a period of time before another past event. For example:
She was a professional writer. She had been writing novels ever since she was in college.
Here 'ever since' means 'since.'
She had been practicing the piano every day.
Cause of a Past Result
The past perfect continuous tense can be used to express why something happened in the past. In this case, the result is expressed using the past simple tense and the cause is expressed using the past perfect continuous tense. Look at the examples:
Sam was very tired. He had been running.
His hands were dirty because he had been fixing the car.
Temporary States
Normally, stative verbs are not used in the progressive form. However, some stative verbs like 'live,' 'enjoy,' 'expect,' 'stay,' and 'have' (in the sense of experiencing) can be used in the past perfect continuous tense to show a temporary state that was ongoing for a limited time in the past.
We had been staying at a hotel while our house was renovated.
We had been expecting news of his safe arrival for hours before he finally called.
Past Perfect Continuous in Reported Speech
As you know, while reporting someone's speech, you have to use reported speech. The structure of reported speech requires a tense which happens sooner than the main tense. For example, if there is a simple present tense, the tense of its reported speech has to be in past simple tense. As a result, you can use the 'past perfect continuous' tense instead of the present perfect continuous tense in reported speech. For example:
Melanie said, "I have been studying all night." = Melanie said that she had been studying all night.
She said, "I was watching TV that night." = She said that she had been watching TV that night.
Common Time Expressions
Since the focus in past perfect continuous tense is on the duration of an action, time expressions used with this tense are concerned with how long something happened for. Common time expressions used with this tense include:
Up until 2020, he had been living abroad.
He had been complaining a lot about his job recently.
We use 'since' with a specific point in time in the past or another action in the past (e.g., since 2004, since April 23rd, since last year, since I was at school, since his arrival). We use 'for' with a period of time (e.g., for 2 hours, for three years, for six months). These are some examples.
We were sad when the factory closed. We had been working there for ten years.
I had been watching the TV show every night since it started.
Past Perfect vs. Past Perfect Continuous
Both past perfect simple and the past perfect continuous (also called the past perfect progressive) can be used to talk about past actions or states. Their main difference is that the past perfect simple normally focuses on the completion of an action before another action in the past, while the past perfect continuous normally focuses on the duration of an ongoing activity before another action in the past. Let's compare these examples:
She had written the report by noon.
The past perfect simple emphasizes the completion of the activity.
She had been writing the report all morning.
The past perfect continuous focuses on the duration of the activity.
Review
Past perfect continuous refers to an action in the past when:
Referring to an action which started in the past and continued progressively to a point of time in past.
Referring to a past action taking place before another past action
Referring to a repeated action continued in the past
Referring to a temporary state in the past
Referring to the reason for a past situation
The table below summarizes the structure of past perfect continuous tense in affirmative, negative, and interrogative sentences:
Structure | subject + had + been + v + -ing |
|---|---|
Affirmative | He had been driving all night. |
Negative | He had not been driving all night. |
Contraction | He'd been driving all night. / He hadn't been driving all night. |
Yes / no question | Had he been driving all night? |
-Wh question | What had he been doing all night? |
Quiz:
Choose the correct sentence using the Past Perfect Continuous.
By the time the guests arrived, Sarah had cooked for hours.
By the time the guests arrived, Sarah cooked for hours.
By the time the guests arrived, Sarah has been cooking for hours.
By the time the guests arrived, Sarah had been cooking for hours.
Sort the words to form a negative sentence in the past perfect continuous tense.
Fill in the blanks with the correct form of the verbs in parentheses.
The kids were covered in mud because they
(play) in the garden all afternoon.
We were surprised they arrived early; we
(not expect) them until much later.
(you/wait) all morning when the delivery finally arrived?
Where
(she/work) before she moved to New York?
Match each sentence to the correct description of use of past perfect continuous.
Which of the following sentences uses a correct time expression with the past perfect continuous tense?
She had been studying hard since two weeks.
They had been living in the city for 2010.
He had been practicing all morning.
I had been working there last year.
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