дома им совсем не хотелось завтракать. Они сидели на берегу озера, жевали бутерброды, которые приготовил Куджо, и молчали. Дракончик думал о своих родителях, которые почему-то его бросили в пещере, а Куджо вспоминал тот день, когда нашел яйцо.
После перекуса они зашагали очень быстро и вскоре очутились в той части леса, где Куджо наткнулся на пещеру. Там было тихо и мрачно. Птицы не пели. Даже деревья не шелестели листьями. Вдруг они увидели пещеру прямо перед собой. Они посмотрели друг на друга, вздохнули и вошли внутрь.
Unit 4
The Past Perfect Continuous Tense
Прошедшее совершенное длительное время
We use the Past Perfect Continuous to indicate actions and situations that started in the past and continued to or ended at a particular point in the past.
Kudjo had been running in the rain for a long time before he came in to a cave.
We use this tense with for and since to indicate how long something had been going on until a particular point in the past.
The structure of a positive sentence is:
Subject + had been + Ving.
Kudjo had been kipping for two hours when Gradjo woke him up.
The structure of a negative sentence is:
Subject + hadn’t been + Ving.
He hadn’t been trying to find the family until Kudjo told him to.
The structure of a question is:
(question word) + had + subject + been + V-ing?
How long had Kudjo been sleeping by then?
EXERCISE 1
Put the verbs in brackets into the Past Perfect Continuous:
1 They were tired because they /play/ dodgeball all afternoon.
2 By the time Kudjo got home, Dradjo /draw/ strange planets for two hours.
3 When he entered the house, he could smell roast meat and vanilla. Dradjo /cook/ his favourite meat muffins.
4 After they /travel/ for several hours, they met a strange creature.
5 They /sleep/ for an hour when someone knocked on the door.
6 /walk / they for a long time before they got lost?
7 It /snow/ all night and they couldn’t open the front door in the morning because of snow.
8 Dradjo was coal black after he /clean/ the chimney.
EXERCISE 2
Find the proper verb and put it into the correct the Past Perfect Continuous form: wait, jog, not garden, plan, cook, not walk, swim, watch.
1 They ***** this trip for ages, so nothing went wrong.
2 Kudjo ***** in a bog for some time when suddenly something caught his leg under the water.
3 They ***** for an hour when their guests finally came.
4 They ***** for long when they stopped for a bite.
5 Kudjo ***** in the park for some minutes when he saw a whimpering puppy.
6 They ***** for several hours before dinner was ready.
7 How long ***** they ***** a cartoon before the lights went off?
8 They ***** for long when it started to rain.
EXERCISE 3
Find and correct mistakes in 7 sentences:
1 His knees and hands were very dirty. He had crawled in the garden.
2 They were out of breath. They were chasing rats.
3 Kudjo had pretending to sleep until Dradjo stopped talking and fell asleep.
4 They have been fighting since lunch and neither wanted to make up first.
5 They had living in the country for a year before they decided to move to the city.
6 How long had you be following that sheep-dog yesterday?
7 Had they been played for a long time before the bulldog joined them?
8 They had been trying to behave themselves until the Doberman beauty went home.
Past Perfect Continuous is the past equivalent of Present Perfect Continuous and has the same functions but in the past.It shows actions of a certain duration that had visible results in the past. Compare:
Kudjo is starving. He hasn’t been eating long.
Kudjo was starving. He hadn’t been eating long.
EXERCISE 4
Put the verbs in brackets into the Past Perfect Continuous or Present Perfect Continuous Tenses:
1 Kudjo has a backache. He /dig/ in the garden.
2 Kudjo was angry with his pet because Dradjo /eat/
