Although the title may seem a little daunting (seemingly difficult, overwhelming), you draw conclusions, or say why things happen all the time. You are probably doing this to yourself, in your head, not to mention in your native language, but after today’s post, that’ll all change!

Imagine you walk into your office, and your desk was open. “Had someone been going through my stuff?” you might wonder. Maybe someone had just been looking for something, like a pen. 

Your friend walks into the room, she looks upset, and her eyes are red, why? You would need to try and quickly assess the situation to know how to appropriately respond: Had she been sleeping? Had she been crying?

All of these conclusions you are trying to come to are expressed by using the past perfect progressive (also known as the past perfect continuous), because you are saying what had been happening before.

The past perfect progressive is formed by using the auxiliary verbs: had + been and the -ing form of the verb (had been verb-ing) and remember this tense is used to describe actions that happened before another past action.

Watch English Outside the Box’s 5 minute English, part of my new video learning series, for further explanations, examples, and to see my beautiful cats!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmzAqbjmW78&w=560&h=315]

Happy Studying! ♥

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