thanghnvn Wrote:Past perfect is not used to show an action which begin before and go into another past action: past perfect continuous does so but is not tested on gmat.
well, not exactly. if
had VERBED is used to describe a state in which something existed, or some activity/action/event that was a regular occurrence, then it may indeed describe something that persisted into the timeframe of another past action.
e.g.
by the time Kyle saw the doctor, he had been sick for 5 days.Kyle, who had played football for over 15 years, finally received a championship ring. (this doesn't mean that kyle stopped playing football at that point)
on the other hand, to describe an action that was literally going on, non-stop, up to (and possibly through) the timeframe of a past event,
had been VERBing is generally used.
Kyle, who had been playing football for over 4 hours, was physically exhausted.--
still, you probably shouldn't be as afraid of these tenses as it seems you are. for the most part,
verb tenses are a minor topic -- they aren't tested very frequently, and, when they
are tested, there are usually other, more important sentence elements (such as parallelism) that you can use to narrow the choices instead.
moreover, if you do you have to use verb tenses to decide a problem, the difference between tenses will usually be significant. i don't think you will ever be responsible for subtle differences between tenses, like the ones described here.
