238 Part IV: The Grammar You Need to Know – and How to Teach It
Figure 16-1:
Timeline
show-
ing three
actions in
the past to
demonstrate
the past
simple and
past perfect
tenses.
XXXXX X
Past Last night Last night Today
run out of money no food hungry
You can highlight words that are typically used with this tense – just, already,
before, ago, by then and never – but remember to teach students where in the
sentence each one goes. For example, you say I had just/already/never seen
that. So, you use just, already and never between had and the past participle.
However, you say I had seen that before/weeks ago/by then. So you use before,
ago and by then after the object word(s). I talk about object words in Chapter
- You can also use already after the object.
Focusing on the Past Perfect Continuous
Like the past perfect simple, you use the past perfect continuous tense when
two actions are in the past and one happened before the other. However, this
time you want to emphasise the duration of the action that happened first.
I had been shopping for hours when I decided to stop for lunch. In this exam-
ple, the two actions are ‘had been shopping’ and ‘decided’. The action that
happened first and seemed to take a long time is in the past perfect continu-
ous and the action that followed is in the past simple.
The past perfect continuous is similar to the past perfect simple but slightly
easier to construct because it always uses had plus been and a gerund:
I had been listening.
In the negative you add not (or n’t) after had. However, in a question you put
the subject word (I, you, we and so on) after had.
Where had you been living before that?
I had not been living in that area.
