The Perfect Progressive Tenses

Combining The Progressive and Perfect Tenses

Notice this sentence from the text:

Of course teachers had been helping students learn to think long before the CLIL approach was introduced (1).

This sentence has the Past Perfect and the Progressive together. It is a Past Progressive tense.

‘Had’ shows that this is a Past Perfect, and ‘been helping’ shows that it is a Progressive Tense.

The sentence is talking about the past.

‘Teachers had been helping’ came first.

It happened over a period of time.

Then, ‘CLIL was introduced’ at a point in time.

We can also form the Present Perfect Progressive:

Teachers have been helping students to use computers since they were first introduced into classrooms.

And the Future Perfect Progressive:

Students will soon have been using computers in school for more than twenty years.

Notice that the Perfect part of the tense is formed by the Perfect of the verb to be (have been, had been or will have been) followed by the Progressive form of the verb (‘helping’, or V+ing).

Present Perfect Progressive has/have been + V+ing

Past Perfect Progressive had been + V+ing

Future Perfect Progressive will have + V+ing

Question Forms:

Have we been V+ing? Has he been V+ing?

Had they been V+ing?

Will you have been V+ing?

Negatives:

I haven’t been V+ing He hasn’t been V+ing

We hadn’t been V+ing

They won’t (will not) have been V+ing

When do we use these tenses?

We have seen how the Perfect links two points, for example:

I’ve read the book. I read it at some point (in the past) . I know what it is about (NOW)

I’ve been reading that book.

I started to read it at some point (in the past) .

I continued reading it.

I may still be reading it (NOW)

The Progressive form here tells us that either:

The action is still ongoing

We see the action as having taken a period of time.

We are focusing more on the activity (reading) than the fact that we have read it.