Grammar › Past Perfect Continuous

Past Perfect Continuous: yes/no questions

480 fill-in-the-gap exercises, 48 tests of ten

Move had in front of the subject. Been and the -ing form stay together.

The pattern

Only had moves:

You had been waiting. → Had you been waiting?

Short answers repeat had

Had he been drinking? — Yes, he had. / No, he hadn’t.

Reading the past evidence

The question usually asks what explains a state someone found:

• Had it been raining? The roads were soaked.
• Had they been arguing? Nobody was speaking.

You are not asking about the past for its own sake, but about the cause of something already established.

How long, in the question

Adding long turns it into a question about duration without a question word:

Had you been waiting long? — a polite way of apologising for being late.

All forms

Examples

Taken from the 480 sentences in this drill. The answer is highlighted.

• Had my mother been making soup every Friday?
• Had they been traveling for hours before they reached their destination?
• Had they been watching the movie when the power went out?
• Had she been playing that video game before her mother came home?
• Had you been reading that book for weeks before you finished it?
• Had they been attending the show before it got canceled?
• Had he been working out at the gym for two hours before he felt tired?
• Had he been listening to the song for weeks before it became popular?
• Had he been writing the report before the meeting started?
• Had they been doing gardening before it started raining?
• Had he been waiting for her phone call all day long?
• Had she been cooking dinner before her guests arrived?

Mistakes to avoid

Other forms of Past Perfect Continuous