Hi Liudmyla,

This is a little tricky to unpack, but no I would generally not so much – it would sound more natural to combine the past perfect continuous with the past simple there (“She had been studying for three hours before she realised…”). The reason being that both the past perfect and past perfect continuous essentially place us before another past event, but unless that other past event needs to be shown as done at an earlier time, too, there’s no need for the perfect. It would only really be necessary to use both at once if we wanted to discuss both a complete and ongoing event occurring before something else, which would be quite rare (e.g. “She had been studying for three hours and had learnt nothing before she realised the book was upside down”).

That said a lot of how we combine tenses will involve time clauses, so the article on that might help: https://englishlessonsbrighton.co.uk/time-clauses-explanation-rules-exercise/

I hope this helps!

Thank you!

Hi Raheema,

In this case it wouldn’t need changing: we backshift described actions in reported speech, but in this case the action being described is already the past perfect continuous, which cannot be backshifted further, while the past simple is used here for a time clause, and does not need to be backshifted as it defines a point of time. So your second option, “Ann said that she had been doing her project for three hours when the lights went out” is correct.

In fact I’d suggest if we use reported speech with mixed perfect tenses and simple tenses, it would make sense to keep the simple tense generally, otherwise you lose the distinction between the two.

Phil

Should it be changed to
Ann said that she had been doing her project for three hours when the lights had gone out.
OR
Ann said that she had been doing her project for three hours when the lights went out.

Hi Shizuka,

Big apologies I think I missed this one – yes, that’s correct!

Phil

If I were to say “He was a wonderful guitarist. He had been playing ever since he was a teenager”, would it be right to say that this sentence means the following:

This person (i.e. He)’s action of playing guitar started since he was a teenager and continued all the way up to a later period of this person’s life when he became a wonderful guitarist (i.e. this later period being represented by “he was a wonderful guitarist”)?