Past Perfect Continuous ESL Worksheets, Games and Activities

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Cause and Effect

ESL Past Perfect Continuous Worksheet - Grammar and Writing Exercises: Gap-fill, Changing Word Forms, Matching, Writing Sentences, Paragraph Completion - Intermediate (B1) - 30 minutes

This comprehensive cause and effect worksheet helps students learn how to use the past perfect continuous to communicate cause and effect. After reading through how the past perfect continuous tense is used to show cause and effect, students complete sentences with the past perfect continuous form of the verbs in brackets. Next, students match situations to their probable causes using because in the middle to connect the results to their causes. After that, students answer questions with their own ideas using the negative form of the past perfect continuous. Lastly, students write about one of their biggest achievements using the past perfect continuous to say four things they did to prepare for it.
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How does it end?

ESL Past Simple and Past Perfect Continuous Game - Grammar and Speaking: Matching, Forming Sentences from Prompts - Group Work - Intermediate (B1) - 25 minutes

In this free past perfect continuous game, students race to match sentence halves together and put them in the past perfect continuous form. In groups, players take it in turns to pick up a beginning card, read the first half of the sentence on the card aloud and place it face-up on the table for everyone to see. All the players then race to find a matching ending from the cards on the table. The first player to find the correct ending picks it up and reads it out, putting the verb in brackets in the past perfect continuous form. If the other players agree that the ending matches and is grammatically correct, the player wins and keeps the pair of cards. If not, the player is out of the round and the other players continue looking for the correct ending. The player with the most cards at the end of the game is the winner.
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Michael had been wondering...

ESL Past Perfect Continuous Worksheet - Grammar and Reading Exercises: Gap-fill, Error Correction, Writing Sentences from Prompts, Reading Comprehension Questions - Intermediate (B1) - 30 minutes

Here is a productive past perfect continuous worksheet for intermediate students to use in class. Students begin with a gap-fill exercise where they complete past perfect continuous sentences using verbs in brackets. Next, students correct mistakes in a set of past perfect continuous sentences. Students then fill in gaps in a story using verbs from a box in the past perfect continuous tense. Students then move on to answer comprehension questions about the story using full past perfect continuous sentences. As an extension, students write and present a short story about the characters in the text using a set of past perfect phrases and other narrative tenses where appropriate.
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Past and Past Perfect Continuous

ESL Past Continuous vs. Past Perfect Continuous Worksheet - Grammar Exercises: Binary Choice, Sentence Completion, Ordering, Writing Questions from Prompts - Intermediate (B1) - 30 minutes

In this insightful past continuous and past perfect continuous worksheet, students learn how the past perfect continuous is different from the past continuous when expressing progressive actions in the past. Students start by identifying the correct past progressive tense in a set of sentences. Next, students complete sentences with their own ideas in the past perfect continuous or past continuous. After that, students put a story in the correct order by numbering sentences 1 to 12. In the last exercise, students write past continuous or past perfect continuous questions that correspond to a set of answers.
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Past Perfect Continuous Practice

ESL Past Perfect Continuous Worksheet - Grammar Exercises: Matching, Identifying, Gap-fill, Sentence Completion - Intermediate (B1) - 25 minutes

This useful past perfect continuous worksheet helps students to identify and practice the past perfect continuous tense. Students begin by matching past perfect continuous sentence halves together. Students then identify past perfect continuous phrases, past simple phrases, affirmative and negative sentences, and questions from the first exercise. Next, students do a gap-fill exercise where they complete sentences with past simple and past perfect continuous verb forms from a box. In the last exercise, students use the past perfect continuous to finish sentences with explanations.
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Combinations

ESL Past Simple and Past Perfect Continuous Game - Grammar and Speaking: Forming Sentences from Prompts, Freer Practice - Group Work - Upper-intermediate (B2) - 20 minutes

In this free past perfect continuous activity, students play a pelmanism style game where they combine past perfect continuous and past simple sentence halves together with when to make logical sentences. In groups, students take it in turns to turn over one past perfect continuous card and one past simple card from each set. If a student can combine the two sentence halves with when to make a logical sentence, the student keeps the two cards and scores a point. If a logical sentence cannot be made, the student turns the cards back over. The student with the most points at the end of the game is the winner.
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Death of a Millionaire

ESL Past Perfect Continuous Activity - Grammar: Running Dictation, Gap-fill, Changing Word Forms - Pair Work - Upper-intermediate (B2) - 25 minutes

In this creative past perfect continuous activity, students take part in a running dictation about a mysterious death and then complete relative clause sentences about the circumstances surrounding it. In pairs, one student is the 'writer' and the other is the 'reader'. The reader runs to the text, reads the first sentence or two, runs back and dictates it to their partner, who writes it down. This continues until the text has been fully dictated. When the students have finished, the readers sit with their writing partner to check their text, making any necessary corrections. Students then complete sentences about the circumstances surrounding the death using details from a box along with the words provided, putting the verbs in the past perfect continuous form.
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Long Sentence Game

ESL Past Simple vs. Past Perfect Continuous Game - Grammar and Writing: Writing Sentence Halves from Prompts, Freer Practice - Group Work - Upper-intermediate (B2) - 25 minutes

In this fun past simple and past perfect continuous activity, students play a long sentence game where they write sentence halves using the past perfect continuous and past simple alternately. Students read the past perfect continuous sentence half at the top of their card, e.g. 'They had been riding camels through the desert for half a day...' Students then write a past simple sentence half underneath to continue the sentence, e.g. '...when they saw an ice cream shop'. Next, students fold their card so that only the sentence half they wrote appears and pass it to the person on their right who writes a past perfect continuous sentence half, e.g. '...they had been looking for one for an hour'. This process is repeated with students writing past perfect continuous and past simple sentence halves alternately until the card is complete. Students then unfold their cards and take it in turns to read their long sentences to the group. Finally, each group chooses the best or most amusing long sentence and reads it to the class.
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Past Perfect Continuous Review

ESL Past Perfect Continuous Review - Grammar Exercises: Unscrambling, Sentence Completion, Gap-fill, Answering Comprehension Questions, Writing a Paragraph - Upper-intermediate (B2) - 30 minutes

In this past perfect continuous review worksheet, students revise the past perfect continuous tense and how it is used with the past simple. To begin, students put words in order to make past perfect continuous sentences about different people. Next, students use their own ideas to complete sentences with a past perfect continuous clause, e.g. 'Before Grace got her first job, she had been volunteering in a hospital'. After that, students complete a story about someone's greatest achievement with verbs in brackets in their past simple or past perfect continuous form. Students then move on to use the past perfect continuous to answer comprehension questions about the story. Finally, students write about one of their greatest achievements using the past perfect continuous and past simple.
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Past Perfect Continuous Sentence Flip

ESL Past Perfect Continuous Game - Grammar and Speaking: Forming Sentences from Prompts, Controlled Practice - Group Work - Upper-intermediate (B2) - 25 minutes

In this engaging past perfect continuous game, students listen to sentences and race to change them into past perfect continuous sentences with time conjunctions. In groups, students take turns picking up a card from the top of the pile and reading out the sentence or sentences on the card along with the time conjunction shown in brackets. The other students listen and race to create a past perfect continuous sentence using the time conjunction. The first student to say the correct sentence written at the bottom of the card in bold or a similarly grammatically correct sentence wins and keeps the card, e.g. 'I had been driving for 14 hours by the time I reached my destination'. The student with the most cards at the end of the game wins.
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