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Hello all? Today we will talk about past perfect continuous tense. The last part of past perfect tense. Like previous tenses we will learn the past perfect tense with same way.Let’s dig into it.

Assignment File Link

Definition

This tense is also known as the progressive tense. Past perfect continuous tense tells us an action that started in the past and that particular action continued up to another point in the past.

Now let’s see how past perfect continuous tense forms:

Subject + had + been + verb –ing form + rest of the sentence.

Let’s have a graphical look about past perfect continuous tense.

The oval shape is the continuous time period in the past and the cross sign indicates another point in the past. This graph indicates that one particular action started in the past and continued up to another point (which was marked by Red Cross) in the past.

Example:

Asif and Kabir had been talking for over 3 hours before their mother came.

Nishat wanted to sit down because he had been working since 9 am.

Let’s have a look about the negative form of past perfect continuous tense.

Structure

Subject + had +not + been + verb –ing form + rest of the sentence.

Example

Joni had not been studying until his father came to the house.

Let’s see some many more examples.

Now we will discuss about the interrogative form of past perfect continuous tense.

Structure:

Had+ Subject + been + verb ing + rest of the sentence + question mark

Example

Had you been eating?

Had they been playing?

Had she been writing?

Now we will discuss another important topic, and the topic is when to use for and when to use since?

For is used about an amount of time. Basically for is used to specify a fixed period of time. For is also used in present past and future tense.

Past:  Last week I travelled for 3 days.

Present Continuous: I am running for 1 hour.

Future: Next week I will visit Khulna for 4 days.

In another way, English is used for expressing a particular point of time. Let’s see the following sentence for better understanding,

I have been reading since 8 am.

Karim has been running since 8 pm.

In the first sentence since 8 am means the particular point, which  means the subject has started reading from 8 am. Hope all of you are clear about the usage of since and for.