Please help me
Please explain me why we don't use Past simple tense or Past continuous instead of Past perfect continuous in this two sentences:
Vicky had been hoping for better news.
I had been travelling all day, so I was exhausted.
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Corrections · 3
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Please explain to me why we do not use simple past tense or past continuous (aka progressive) tense instead of past perfect continuous in these two sentences:
Vicky had been hoping for better news.
I had been travelling all day, so I was exhausted.
Hi, Tri. Unfortunately, without knowing the context surrounding these sentences, it is extremely hard (if not impossible) to explain to you why these sentences were not written using other tenses. Verb tenses simply tell us how an action relates to the flow of time. As to these sentences, specifically, they are describing an event (an emotion, an action) that was in progress in the past.
The author of the sentences had a reason to compose the sentences in this manner, but without further information for us, the viewer, to place it into context, anything we told you would be purely a guess. To be sure, as the others have done, I could tell you what the other tenses you mention describe, how they work, as well as provide you with examples, yet, without more information, that still would not allow us to know or to state exactly why these two are in the past perfect continuous tense.
In that respect, so that we can better understand the context, if you would provide us with the paragraphs these two sentences came from, or the questions that these two sentences concern, it would definitely help us to help you. J.
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Please explain to me why we don't use Past simple tense or Past continuous instead of Past perfect continuous in this these two sentences:
Vicky had been hoping for better news.
I had been travelling all day, so I was exhausted.
Verb tenses are best understood in the context of a story.
They can all be correctly used.
Mark got sick in March 2018. The doctors didn't know why.
On June 15, the doctor called.
Vicky had been hoping for better news for months
[hoping for a period of time, March to June, in the past].
The doctor said he had a solution.
Mark got sick in March 2018. The doctors didn't know why.
He was sick for two months.
Every day, Vicky hoped for better news.
[hoped at a point in time]
On June 15, the doctor called.
The doctor said he had a solution.
Mark got sick in March 2018. The doctors didn't know why.
He was sick for two months.
Every day, Vicky was hoping for better news.
[hoping is a continuous action verb, in the past]
On June 15, the doctor called.
The doctor said he had a solution.
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The first sentence is not correct, you need to have another part that happened after she was hoping. The second sentence is an textbook example where you have two different activities that happened in order like one first and the other one later. At first you had travelled and just after then (or as a result of that fact) you were exhausted.
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