Past Perfect or Past Perfect Continuous: Completed or Ongoing? - Part 7

Choose the correct form, then answer the questions about it

It ..... since early that morning, and the garden chairs were wet.

had rained

had been raining

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Rule: Past Perfect Continuous – B1 Grammar ShowHide

had been + -ing

An activity that went on for some time up to a moment in the past.

How long – with for, since, all day: Pam had been doing the same job for ten years before she tried something different.
The cause of a past result: Driving to work was difficult as it had been snowing all night.

I hadn't been sleeping well.
His clothes were covered in mud. What had he been doing?

Past Perfect Simple instead

had + 3rd form – the focus is on a finished action or its result.

How many, how much: I had looked at twenty flats before I found one I liked.
Done before another moment: I had finished my homework by the time my friends arrived.
Something that didn't happen: We were hungry because we hadn't eaten since breakfast.
State verbs – know, like, have (own): We had known each other for years.

Ask yourself: is it about the duration, how long it was going on? Take the continuous: They had been filming the same scene for three hours. Is it about the result, what was done or how many times? Take the simple: The phone had rung six times before they answered it.

Why the two forms are not the same

She had met him before and she had been meeting him describe very different things: the first is finished and counted, the second was still running. This exercise makes the difference explicit – you pick the form first, and then answer for it.

Five sentences, three questions each. Level B1.