What is past perfect continuous tense?

It is used to express a continued or ongoing action that began in past and proceeded until at some time in past. (Keep in mind, an ongoing action in past which continued till some time in past) There will be a time reference, for example, "since 1980, for three hours and so on" from which the action had begun. A sense of time reference is found in these sentences which demonstrate that action had begun in past and continued till eventually in past. Such time reference or sense of reference is the identity of Present perfect continuous tense that it tells that action has begun from a specific time in past or for some time period. For example, “He had been reading in this school since 2005”, It means that he had started his education in this school in 2005 and he studied in this school till sometime in past.

Examples:

At that time he had been writing a novel for two months.

I had not been waiting for Karim for one hour.

She had not been playing cards since 7 O’clock.

Had I been living in America since 2003?

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What is Past perfect tense?

The PAST PERFECT TENSE denotes that an action was completed (finished or 'perfected') at some point in the past before something else happened. This tense is consisted with the past tense form of 'to have' (HAD) plus the past participle of the verb (which can be either regular or irregular in form).

*The Past perfect tense describes an action completed before a certain moment in the past; as,

I met him in New Delhi in 1999.I had seen him last five years before.

*If two actions happened in the past, it may be necessary to show which action happened earlier than the other. The Past perfect is mainly used in such situations. The Simple Past is used in one clause and the Past perfect in the other as;

When I reached the station the train had started. (So I couldn’t get into the train)

I had done my exercise when Hari came to see me.

I had written the letter before he arrived.

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What is Past continuous tense?

*The simple past continuous is used to denote an action going on at some time in the past. The time of the action may or may not be indicated.

We were listening to the radio all evening.

It was getting darker.

The light was out while I was reading.

When I saw him, he was playing chess.

As in the last two examples above, the Past Continuous and Simple Past were used together when a new action happened in the middle of a longer action. The Simple Past is used for the new action.

*This tense is also used with always, continually etc. For persistent habits in the past.

He was always grumbling.

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What is Simple past tense?

The past indefinite tense or past simple, sometimes called the preterit, is the basic form of the past tense in present English. It is used principally to describe events in the past, even though it also has some other uses.

The term ‘simple‘ is used to distinguish the syntactical construction whose basic form uses the plain past tense alone, from other past tense constructions which use auxiliaries in combination with participles, such as the past perfect and past progressive.

*The simple past tense is used to denote an action completed in the past. It often occurs with adverbs or adverb phrases of past time.

The steamer sailed yesterday.

I received his letter a week ago.

She left school last year.

*Sometimes this tense is used without an adverb of time. In such cases the time may be either implied or indicated by the context.

I learnt Hindi in Nagpur.

I didn’t sleep well.

Babar defeated Rana Sanga at Kanwaha.

*The Simple Past is also used for past habits; as,

He studied many hours every day.

She always carried an Umbrella.

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