Past perfect simple and past perfect continious (0)

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Past Perfect Simple and Continuous  
 
 
Table of Contents 
 
 
 
Past Perfect Simple ............................................................... 2 
When to use the Past Perfect Simple ..................................... 2 
Past Perfect Continuous (Progressive) ................................... 3 
When to use the Past Perfect Continuous.............................. 3 
Comparison of the use of different past tenses  ...................... 4 
 
 
Past Perfect Simple  
 
The Past Perfect is had + a past participle. It is the same in all persons. 
 
 
 
I had worked 
 
 
 
he had gone  
Negative   
I 
had not slept /hadn’t slept 
Question   
Had he studied? 
  
When to use the Past Perfect Simple 
 
Past Perfect tenses in general refer to: 
An event in the past which happened before another event in the past, 
where there is no time expression to make this clear . 
 
 By the time I got to the  station , the  train  had left . 
Compare this with: 
 
 The train left  five  minutes before I got to the station. 
In this example, the sequence of events is made clear by before. 
The Past Perfect is not used simply to describe an event in the distant 
past. There must be another past event, less far away in the past, with  
which it contrasts . 
   
When the company went  bankrupt, it had lost  over a million  
pounds. 
The Past Perfect is used to make clear that one action in the past happened 
before another action in the past.  
 
When we  arrived home, Anna had gone to bed.  
          George didn’t want to  come  to the cinema  with us because he had  
already   seen  the film  twice. 
          It was my  first  time in an airplane . I was very nervous because I  
hadn’t flown before. 
 
2
Past Perfect Continuous (Progressive) 
  
The Past Perfect Continuous is had been + an -ing-form. 
 
 
 
I had been reading  / you’d been reading 
Negative  
you 
had not been working  /you hadn’t been  
         
 
 
 
 
 
 
working 
Question   
Had he been waiting ? 
 
  
 When to use the Past Perfect Continuous 
  
The Past Perfect Continuous is used to talk about a situation or activity  
that happened over a period up to a particular point of time in the past, 
or until shortly before it.  
When the boys came into the house, their clothes were dirty , their hair  was 
untidy  and one had a  black eye. They had been fighting. 
I was very tired when I arrived home. I’d been working  hard  all 
day.  
 The Past Perfect Continuous can be used to say how long something  
had been happening before something else happened. 
The  football match had to be stopped. They had been playing  for  half  an 
hour  when a terrible  storm   started . 
          Ken had been smoking for 30  years  when he  finally gave it up.  
 
 
 
3
 Comparison of the use of different past tenses 
 
The contrasts between  Past Simple and Past Continuous can be made in Past 
Perfect tenses for events further back in the past. 
I had been living in a bed-sitter up to then. 
While I had been talking  on the phone , Jimmy had escaped. 
The  whole place  was deserted, but it was obvious that  someone  had been 
living there. They'd been cooking in the  kitchen  for a start, and they 
hadn’t bothered to clear up the  mess . 
 
Compare how the Past Perfect Continuous and the Past Perfect are used: 
I’d been finishing  some work in he 
I’d finished  all my work, so I had very 
garden and hadn’t seen Sue come home.   little to do. 
Bill  had been saving  since Christmas to  Bill had saved enough money to buy 
buy a new bike . 
the bike he wanted . 
  
We use the Past Perfect Continuous when we talk about the continuity or 
duration of a situation or activity, and the Past Perfect to talk about the 
completion of a situation or activity or its effects . 
  
If we talk about how long something went on up to a particular point of time in 
the past, we prefer the Past Perfect Continuous. If we talk about how many 
times something happened in a period up to a particular point of time in the 
past, we use the Past Perfect. 
 
They had been travelling for about 36 hours . 
When the company went bankrupt, it had been losing money for months. 
We had been looking  at the painting for about ten minutes before we 
realised who the artist was. 
          I’d heard the symphony many times before. 
The  teacher  had let  them  get away with their bad behaviour  once too often. 
 
4