Exercises
Past perfect or past perfect continuous exercises
‘We had held twelve meetings’ or ‘We had been negotiating for months’? Practise the past perfect and the past perfect continuous with business examples – results and numbers, activities and how long, and the verbs we don’t use in continuous forms.
Quick rules
past perfect (had done)
A finished action or result before a moment in the past – often with how many or how much.
By the time the deal closed, we had held twelve meetings.
past perfect continuous (had been doing)
An activity that continued up to a moment in the past – often with how long.
We had been negotiating for six months before they signed.
explaining a past situation
The continuous form explains what caused a situation we could see.
The client was annoyed because he had been waiting for 40 minutes.
state verbs
Know, be, have (own), hate, believe… use the past perfect, not the continuous.
We had known each other since business school.
Quiz
Choose the right tense from two or three options. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
Gap-fill
Type the correct form of the verb. Contractions and full forms are both accepted.
Match the sentence halves
Match sentence beginnings to their endings – a test of meaning as well as tense.
Learn the rules first
All lessons are part of our Verb Tenses in Business guide.
More past tenses
Practise the past simple, past continuous and past perfect together in our past tenses exercises.
Correct on paper is not the same as natural in the boardroom
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