Past Perfect Continuous: Conversation Questions - Part 2

Look at the situation and answer the question

Why were you so quiet yesterday?

What had you been thinking about?

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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.

Something had been going on

Every situation here is the visible end of something longer: the mud on the clothes, the smell in the kitchen, the crumpled pages of a book on the floor. The question asks what had been happening before – and the past perfect continuous is the natural way to answer it.

Twelve questions for speaking in class or in pairs. Level B1.