🌀 Grammar B2-2: Past perfect continuous

The past perfect continuous arrives in the Fleydo B2 series as the past twin of a tense the learner already owns. The whole system simply slides one step back: stand at now and the evidence in front of you takes has been doing; stand at a past moment and the evidence that was in front of you then takes had been doing. A two-row table makes that slide visible and is deliberately taught as a system rather than as a new form, because the same movement governs the rest of the perfect family. The opening scene is a discovery: Oona lets herself into the flat at six in the morning and reads the traces backwards — a warm kettle, forty index cards, pink eyes, a balcony door open in February. A four-question procedure guards the choice: is it an activity or a state, is there a past moment to look back from, was the activity still running at that moment or just stopped with traces or already counted and closed, and is there a number anywhere in the sentence. Three worked runs include one the plain past perfect wins outright. Two compare-and-verdict pairs hold the two lines this tense sits between: had been reading for two hours against had read three chapters, the hours against the score; and was crying against had been crying, walking into the middle of something against arriving one minute too late for it. A 134-word tap-and-explain narrative shows the two past perfects sharing the work, the continuous supplying the hours while the simple supplies the facts. Practice runs to thirty-two multiple-choice items in four explained sets, twelve clues to sort into hours and score, six repairs from real upper-intermediate drafts, and four traps — two of them the B2 signature of trying too hard, stretching a single flick of a handle across an afternoon. Teacher notes give a 45-minute sequence, the draw-the-flat board move, the number test for stuck learners and Cambridge B2 First relevance.