Past Perfect Continuous ESL Worksheets, Games and Activities
This comprehensive cause and effect worksheet helps students learn how to use the past perfect continuous to communicate cause and effect. First, 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. Students then think of a personal experience where they were preparing for or working on something over a period of time and then describe the result of those efforts using the past perfect continuous to describe what they had been doing and because to explain how it led to the result. Finally, students read out their texts to the class.
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 turns picking up a beginning card, reading the first half of the sentence aloud and placing 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 writes the past perfect continuous form of the verb on the ending card and keeps the two 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.
Here is a productive past perfect continuous worksheet for intermediate students to use in class. First, students complete sentences with verbs in brackets in their past perfect continuous form. Next, students correct mistakes in past perfect continuous sentences and questions. Students then complete a short story with verbs from a box in their past perfect continuous form. Finally, students answer reading comprehension questions about the story using the past perfect continuous.
In this insightful past perfect continuous vs. past continuous worksheet, students learn how the past perfect continuous is different from the past continuous when expressing ongoing actions in the past. Students start by identifying the correct past tense in sentences. Next, students complete sentences with their own ideas in the past perfect continuous or past continuous. After that, students put lines of a story in the correct order by numbering sentences 1 to 12. Lastly, students write past perfect continuous or past continuous questions that correspond to a set of answers.
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 complete sentences with past simple and past perfect continuous verb forms from a box. Finally, students use the past perfect continuous to complete sentences with explanations.
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 turns turning 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.
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.
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 turns reading their long sentences to the group. Finally, each group chooses the best or most amusing long sentence and reads it to the class.
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.
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.
