How To Use Past Perfect Tenses | SIMPLE or CONTINUOUS

Welcome back to the mmmEnglish Youtube Channel,

I'm your coach, Emma and today we're going to focus on the

language that you need to tell stories in English

which is a fundamental communication skill, isn't it?

When we tell stories, whether they're based on real experiences or

they're made up stories to entertain others,

we're usually talking about something that happened in the past,

a past event.

So knowing how to accurately use the past tenses is really useful

but it's also going to help you to tell stories in an interesting

and engaging way.

You might have seen narrative tenses in English textbooks.

So this refers to verb tenses that are used to talk about the past

and help you to tell a story.

So in this lesson today we are going to take a close look at the

past perfect continuous and of course, I'm going to share

the similarities and differences between this tense

and the past perfect because they're kind of similar.

Even though this is a grammar lesson,

we're going to do some pronunciation practice and have some fun

along the way and make sure you stick with me to the end,

I've got a mini quiz to help you practise everything you learn

in this lesson. Let's get to it!

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Now narrative tenses, like I said earlier is just another way

to talk about the past tenses and so they include

the past simple, the past continuous, the past perfect

and the past perfect continuous.

And a narrative is a spoken or a written account

of connected events. A story.

And these tenses help us to give accurate information about

how and when events happened in the past

so the past perfect continuous gives us very specific

 information about the state of the action  

and when I say state, I'm talking about whether or not that action

or that event has started,

if it was in progress or it was complete

at a particular moment in the past.

So it helps us to order our stories

but it'll be much easier if I show you an example

so that you can see what I'm talking about.

Last week, I went for a bike ride.

I saw my friend Paul.

So these two sentences are both written in the past simple

aren't they? They're completed actions. They're finished.

When we put them on a timeline we can see that

they both took place at some point in the past but

we don't know when or which one happened first, do we?

So by using a combination of narrative tenses

we can be more precise about how and when these actions

took place so if we use the past perfect continuous,

we're going to bring our story to life.

I had been riding my bike when I saw my friend Paul.

So when I put one of these actions into the

past perfect continuous,

it becomes really clear that the bike riding started

before I met Paul and at the moment in time when I met Paul

the bike riding was incomplete.

I hadn't finished riding my bike when I saw Paul.

So the past perfect continuous describes an event

 an event that started before a particular moment in time

and it was still in progress at that time in the past.

Let's look at another example.

She had been working in the garden

when it started to rain.

So at that moment,

at the moment it started to rain

what was the state of the action working?

Had she finished working in the garden?

No, when the rain started, the gardening or working in the garden

was incomplete. There was still more work

to be done. It wasn't finished.

Now if you've been paying attention, you've probably already

noticed what goes into a past perfect continuous

sentence. They use the auxiliary verbs had and been

along with the main verb which is in -ing form.

Let's just go back to those original examples.

I had been riding my bike when I saw my friend Paul.

She had been working in the garden

when it started to rain.

Now you can create negative sentences by putting not

between had and being.

Had not been.

I had not been riding my bike.

She hadn't been working in the garden.

So before we go any further why don't you take a moment

just to write a few sentences

with this tense just to practise the structure,

add them down into the comments below.

I'll be down there to review them and give a little bit of help

if you need it.

And before we go any further in this lesson, I want to take a

few moments to focus on your pronunciation to make sure that

when you are using this tense you're sounding natural and relaxed

just like me or any other native English speaker

and using contractions with the past perfect continuous is

definitely going to help.

Now if you've watched my lesson about auxiliary verbs

which is up here if you need it,

you'll know that auxiliary verbs are usually

unstressed and it changes the way that they are spoken.

They are usually connected to the subject in spoken English

and that makes a contraction.

In a past perfect continuous sentence

there are two auxiliary verbs had and being

but had is the one that is contracted to the subject

so it's very natural to say I'd instead of I had,

you'd instead of you had,

she'd, he'd, we'd

they'd

and the trickiest one, it'd.

Try it.

It'd been raining all day.

Now the verb been is also an auxillary verb

and although it doesn't get contracted in the same way that

had does, it's also unstressed in spoken English

so you won't really hear people saying

been, they had been here.

What you'll actually hear is been.

Been with a short vowel sound.

I'd been doing the shopping.

You'd been listening to music.

He'd been cooking.

It'd been raining.

You get the idea.

Usually at this point I'd continue on and show you how all

of these contractions sound in the negative form as well

but I've got something that might come as a bit of a surprise.

The past perfect continuous is actually not very common

in spoken English.

It just sounds quite formal in spoken language,

maybe it's all of those auxiliary verbs

so you'll often hear people using the past continuous

just to sound a little bit more natural.

Now if you really want to get some pronunciation practice

with past perfect contractions, you can check out this lesson

up here where I go into it in a lot more detail.

Okay so let's talk about some of the most common mistakes

that my students are making with this tense

and actually, there are two of them the first one is using verbs that  

can't be used in the continuous tense.

Yeah not all verbs can be used in the continuous tense

like this sentence here, something's not quite right about it.

The verb see just like other verbs of the senses

like taste and smell, these are stative verbs

and stative verbs describe a state of being rather than an action

and usually they can't be used in the continuous tense.

This sentence is going to sound so much better if we use an action

verb instead.

I'd been watching the waves when I bumped into Paul.

Or if you really want to use the verb see then just switch the tense.

I saw the waves crashing into the shore

and later I bumped into Paul.

The second mistake that I see my students making all of the time

is this one.

She has been working in the garden

when it started to rain.

Can you see what's wrong with this one?

This is the present perfect continuous, the past perfect uses had.

No matter what the subject is, we use had in the past perfect.

You're used to conjugating verbs for the third person singular

subjects in English, she, he and it

but not with the past perfect.

You only use had no matter what the subject.

You're probably feeling pretty confident with this tense by now

but you might be wondering

well how is this tense different from the past perfect simple?

Well there are three ways to compare these two tenses

and I'm going to go through it right now. Are you ready?

The first difference to remember is that the past perfect

shows a completed action whereas the past perfect continuous  

shows an incomplete action.

We had just been for a bike ride when we bumped into Paul.

Or we could also say:

We had been riding our bikes when we bumped into Paul.

So in the first example

we're using the past perfect simple

to explain that the bike ride was complete when we met Paul.

We're not riding anymore the ride is over

but in the second example,

the past perfect continuous

tells us that the bike ride is still in progress.

It's an incomplete action.

Is that clear? Good.

However both of these tenses can actually express

a completed action, especially when we're using them

with the adverbs for and since which is really common

in perfect tenses, isn't it? Let's have a look at an example.

I had been cleaning for hours to prepare for the party.

Or we could say I had cleaned for hours to prepare for the party.

The meaning is almost the same in both sentences

but the emphasis shifts just ever so slightly

because the past perfect continuous helps us to emphasise

the duration or the length of the action,

you know, I spent a long time cleaning and now finally

the house is clean.

The past perfect sentence emphasises that the action is complete

so I've finished cleaning and as a result

the house is ready for the party.

Now in reality, in many situations, you can use either the past

perfect or the past perfect continuous

and it's just that subtle difference in meaning that makes

your sentences a little more powerful.

Now the third difference that you need to be aware of

is about how that action is viewed.

Is it a temporary action or is it a permanent one?

He had lived in London for five years.

Now in that sentence we view the action as being permanent

using the past perfect but compare that to:

He had been living in London for five years.

Now in that sentence we view the action as being temporary.

It's so subtle. It's not the meaning of the sentence that changes.

Both of those sentences are correct, there's just a teeny tiny shift

in the way that we view the action, whether it's temporary

or it's permanent. Let me give you another example.

My brother had been working in a restaurant for two years

when he decided to study medicine.

So I'm using the past perfect continuous here because

I think of that job as being temporary.

Now, on the other hand, my brother would say:

I had worked in the restaurant industry for two years

before I started studying medicine.

So he's using the past perfect because he viewed that action

that work as being permanent. He thought that that career

would be a permanent one in the restaurant industry.

So you can see that there isn't always a right or a wrong answer,

sometimes it just comes down to emphasis or perception

and the way that you choose to communicate your story.

The way that you choose to express something might actually be

different to the way that someone else does

and that's okay.

All right I think it's time for a quiz now. We've gone through

how to accurately use the past perfect continuous tense.

Now let's practise actually using it together.

I'm going to give you two events or two actions and both of these

things have taken place in the past so all you need to do is

join them together into one sentence and make sure you use

the past perfect continuous.

So for example, the first event is we played football.

This is the thing that was happening first but then

something else happened. It started to rain.

So your answer could be:

We had been playing football when it started to rain.

Okay so now it's your turn to write these sentences.

I want you to write them down in the comments below

so I can come down and check them for you,

give you some feedback if you need them.

I'm not going to go through the answers in this video.

So the first event: We waited for the bus for an hour.

And the second event: The bus finally arrived.

Hit pause if you need to, write your sentence down below.

Okay try this one.

He worked at the supermarket for a long time.

One day he became the manager.

They spent the whole afternoon cooking

but the dinner guests cancelled.

So how did you do? I hope that this lesson has helped to make

the past perfect continuous a little clearer

and hopefully, you feel a bit more comfortable using it now.

Another really great way for you to practise and become

more familiar with this tense is through your writing.

Even if it's as simple and mundane as writing about what you did

during the day, it's an awesome opportunity to practise

using narrative tenses to help you accurately tell the story

of your day in order so that it's clear

when and how these events happened in relation to each other.

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as soon as I've got a new lesson ready for you. I've got some really

great grammar lessons coming up that are going to help you to

improve your accuracy over the next several weeks.

I'll be back next week with a brand new lesson

but while you're waiting, why not check out this one right here?

I'll see you in there!