Past Perfect Continuous

• Use the past perfect continuous to talk about actions that continued for a period of time before another action or time in the past. Focus on how long something was happening.
• Subject
• Auxiliary
• Verb + -ing
• Time expression
• We
• had been
• reviewing
• for two hours before the call.
• David
• hadn't been
• checking
• unanswered emails last week.
• What
• had
• you been
• doing before the meeting?
• Remember
• Form the past perfect continuous with had + been + verb-ing.
• Use it to show the duration of an activity up to a point in the past.
• Often used with 'for' and 'since' to measure time before another past event.
• Do not use state verbs (like know or want) in this tense.
• Examples
• Melissa had been working in Boston when the account was lost.
• Why had the team been ignoring those warning signals for months?
• Our competitor had been contacting the client before we noticed.
• Common mistakes
• They were working for hours before the manager arrived.
• They had been working for hours before the manager arrived.

Complete the sentences

• When Robert called, we (discuss) ____ the lost account for an hour.
• The client (not send) ____ declining orders until last month.
• How long (you / wait) ____ before the account review meeting started in Chicago?
• The support team (ignore) ____ those unanswered emails for weeks.
• Why (she / not look) ____ at the warning signals in Seattle?
• They (talk) ____ with a competitor before we found out.

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