Quiz Time in inglese: intermediate exercise 16

It’s Quiz Time again at Ingliando.
Do you know the right answer?

ATTENZIONE
VERSIONE CORRETTA QUI SOTTO

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It rained all last week.

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Your comments are always very welcome.

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Author: Tony

Born and raised in Malaysia between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Educated at Wycliffe College in Stonehouse, Gloucestershire, England. Living in the foothills of Mount Etna since 1982 and teaching English at Catania University since 1987.

17 thoughts on “Quiz Time in inglese: intermediate exercise 16”

  1. Hi Tony,

    I chose B, too… but if I had been asked to directly translate I’d have written “It had been raining …”

    Why would it be wrong?

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    1. “It had been raining” (past perfect continuous) is only really useful when you are already telling a story in the past simple and you need to make a reference to a continuous action that started before the time of the story. It’s like a “duration form” in the past. Let me give you a couple of examples:

      “It had been raining (pre-story time) for three hours when the sun finally came out (story time) from behind the clouds.”

      “Tom was (story time) exhausted because he had been working (pre-story time) all day in the garden.”

      In the exercise here, the time reference is “last week” and we are just stating a simple fact, something that happened last week.

      🙂

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  2. It rained all last week.

    it has been raining all last week….Can i say also in this way or not?

    Thanks teacher Tony!

    Have a happy “Pasquetta”! (So, it has said the day after Easter in italy).

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    1. Hi Nadia.
      Answer ‘B’ is correct, as you guessed.
      You can’t combine the present perfect or the present perfect continuous with “last” (scorso), because the time is clearly specified. Your only option is the past simple.

      Enjoy your “Easter Monday”!
      (Our name for it is a bit boring, I’m afraid!)

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            1. if we say….last week we are referring to the week immediately before the current one.

              the last week if more than seven days have passed,I think.

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              1. I’m not sure about the “seven days” theory, Giovanna, but if you think in terms of a week going from Monday through to Sunday, then it’s pretty easy to understand what “last week” refers to. 🙂

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