6 Past Perfect Continuous

Past Perfect Continuous is a tense used to talk about actions or situations that were in progress before some other actions or situations.

We usually find this structure in its three forms:

Affirmative form

The Affirmative form has this structure :
Subject + had + been + present participle.

SUBJECT	AUXILIARY VERB	BEEN (V3)	PRESENT PARTICIPLE
I/You/He/She/It/We/They	had	been	walking

Negative form

The Negative form has this structure:
Subject + had not + been + present participle.

SUBJECT	AUXILIARY VERB (w/ NEGATION)	BEEN (V3)	PRESENT PARTICIPLE
I/You/He/She/It/We/They	had not*	been	walking

*Short version of the negative form is: “hadn’t been“

Interrogative form

The Interrogative structure has this form:
Had + Subject + been + present participle + (?).

AUXILIARY VERB	SUBJECT	BEEN (V3)	PRESENT PARTICIPLE	QUESTION MARK
Had/ Hadn’t	I/You/He/She/It/We/They	been	walking	?

In winter season I had been learning to ski before I broke his leg.
He had been thinking of the past in those days.
My family had been searching an available place to stay before they came here.
He hadn’t been thinking of the past in those days.
Had he been thinking of the past in those days?

We use Past Perfect Continuous:

To talk about duration of a past action up to a certain point in the past;
To show cause of an action or sitution;
With third conditional;
With reported speech.

Past Perfect Continuous is used to talk about actions or situations that were in progress before some other actions. It is used to talk about a duration of a past action that ends in a certain point in the past, to show the cause of an action or situation, to make third conditionals, to use indirect (reported) speech.

Past Perfect Continuous has this structure:

Affirmative: Subject + had + been + present participle (e.g. I had been removing the trash when my dad called.);
Negative: Subject + had not + been + present participle (e.g. I hadn’t been removing the trash when my dad called.);
Interrogative: Had + Subject + been + present participle + (?) (e.g. Had I been removing the trash when my dad called?).

For example:
— “I had been removing the trash when my dad called.” = Removing the trash is an action that started at a moment in the past and continued for a while until my dad called, both actions took place in the past. Using Past Perfect Continuous indicates that removing the trash is a progress.
> “I had removed the trash before I went to school.” = Past Perfect Tense shows that removing the trash is the first action that took place. It doesn’t show any progress. It only shows us the order of the actions.

Let’s revise this content within the [Form] section. Take a look at the [Example] section that shows its use within a context.