In this grammar refresh, we're going to look at the present perfect, continuous tense.
Now, we've looked at this before, so I'm going to do it again just because the more you see it, the
more familiar you get, the easier it becomes to use.
And if you remember the present perfect continuous being, a continuous tense means that we're focusing
on the operation of the action, not the action itself, if that happened or not, happened at the actual
operation.
That's what we mean when we mean any of.
And for the present, perfect, it's something that started in the past and then has some connection
to the present time that you're talking about it, so make this present perfect, continuous.
You use a form of the verb to have, have or has in the past participle of to be then followed by your
main verb in the present participle, which means you add engy.
To the base for the let's look at our example, the first one is I've been trying to find some cute
presents for my nieces for over a week.
I don't know what to get them.
Here we have the phrase I've been trying for, I have been trying this is the present perfect continuous
egg and you can see in the sentence we have that phrase for over a week, but that gives you the duration
that this action has been happening.
Right.
So this person has been trying to do this, trying to find some presence or a duration of over a week.
The next example, how long have you been cooking?
I've been cooking for more than 13 hours now.
I'm so exhausted, I just want this Christmas madness to be over.
One more time, how long have you been cooking?
I've been cooking for more than 13 hours now.
I'm so exhausted I just want this Christmas madness be over.
And so here we have a question for how long have you been cooking it up?
Thing to notice here is where are we putting that subject?
You know, it goes between the have and the bean, but have you been in so it's not how long you have
been cooking, it's how long have you been cooking, whatever the subject of the question would be.
You put that there.
So how long has he been cooking?
How long has it been cooking?
How long have you been cooking, if you're going to change on who you're talking to?
And then following that, we have I've been cooking, so this is just the positive form of the sentence
I've been cooking, and you have that duration there for 13 hours for more than 13 hours as this is
continuous tense.
We're talking about that operation.
This action has been going on from the past and now.
In this Granma refresh, we're looking at the past continuous verb, the past continuous verb tense,
and we make this very tense in the past in us, we're going to use the past tense form of the verb to
be you have were or was.
Followed by the present participle of your main verb into add, I enjoy the base for this past continuous
tense is used to describe a event that was ongoing during a certain time in the past.
There's no connection to the present.
We're just talking about a event that happened, but we're talking about the duration of that event,
not just the action happening there.
So this is why we're using the past continuous.
But let's look at our example.
The first one is it was a New Year's Eve, our parents were sleeping, I was playing video games in
my room and our cat was eating Christmas decorations.
So here we have a few uses of this past continuous tense.
Our parents were sleeping and so during this New Year's Eve in the past.
The parents were sleeping right during that whole event.
The duration they were sleeping and the other person was playing video games, the cat was eating.
So these are all things that were happening.
The duration of them in this event in the past.
And let's look at the next example, what did you do yesterday?
Oh, well, I was cleaning, I was cooking, I was working out, I was doing everything.
So here we have quite a few uses of the past, continuous tense.
And because we asked what you were or what did you do yesterday and yesterday, is this in front?
And during this time frame, these actions were taking place.