Past Perfect Continuous · Exercises
C2Proficient practice
Regrets, conditionals and tricky state verbs.
Play
- Practice10 exercises at your own pace
- Time Attack60 seconds, as many as you can
- Survival3 lives, harder as you go
- Tense SortDrag sentences into their tense — 60 seconds
- Timelines10 sentences to match to their timelines
- C2 Boss12 hits before you lose 3 lives
- Irregular MatchPair verbs with their past forms — 60 seconds
Want to mix tenses, go endless or pick exercise types? Set up your own session.
What you’ll practise at C2
- Negatives: hadn’t been
- Questions: Had you been…?
- Causes: She was tired because she had been running
- had been doing or had done?
- had been doing or was doing?
- Reported speech: said she had been…
- If I hadn’t been driving… (third conditional)
- I wish I hadn’t been…
- Timelines: what the tense means
Need a refresher? Learn the past perfect continuous: rules, tables and audio examples.
Sample exercises
A taste of what’s inside. In practice mode every exercise is freshly generated.
Write the verb in the past perfect simple or continuous.
By the end of the day, my best friend _____ (run) ten kilometres.
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By the end of the day, my best friend had run ten kilometres.
A completed amount (five emails, ten kilometres) takes the past perfect simple, not the continuous.
Write the verb in the past perfect simple or continuous.
Raj _____ (understand) the risks from the start when he signed.
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Raj had understood the risks from the start when he signed.
“understand” is a state verb, so it isn’t used in the continuous: had understood, not had been understanding.
Turn the sentence into a question.
Julia had been revising for her exams since breakfast when the storm started.
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Had Julia been revising for her exams since breakfast when the storm started?
Questions: Had + subject + been + -ing…?
Report what they said.
“We’ve been waiting for ages,” Noah and Zara said. → Noah and Zara said they _____ (wait) for ages.
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Noah and Zara said they had been waiting for ages.
In reported speech, “I’ve been doing” usually moves back to “had been doing”.
Is this sentence correct?
Ben didn’t been playing football when the power went off.
Show answer
Ben hadn’t been playing football when the power went off.
“didn’t” should be “hadn’t”. Negative: hadn’t (had not) been + -ing.
Write the verb in the past perfect continuous.
Ben and Ivan’s eyes were red because they _____ (cry).
Show answer
Ben and Ivan’s eyes were red because they had been crying.
Use the past perfect continuous to explain a past situation with the activity that caused it: She was out of breath because she had been running.