past perfect continuous tense

8. Past Perfect Continuous Tense

We use the Past Perfect Continuous to show that something started in the past and continued up until another time in the past. “For five minutes” and “for two weeks” are both durations which can be used with the Past Perfect Continuous. Notice that this is related to the Present Perfect Continuous however, the duration does not continue until now, it stops before something else in the past.

FORM:

S + had + been + Verb-ing

ex: Lina had been study at the university for 1 year before she left to Korea