It Had Been Raining..........


A few years ago, in an English lesson, I was teaching a class how to write a composition on a flash flood.

A student stood up, pointed at the whiteboard and said, 'Teacher, your first sentence is wrong. It should be 'It was raining cats and dogs for three days.'

"There's nothing wrong with the sentence," I said, and added, "It is correct to say it had been raining cats and dogs for three days."

"But no past perfect continuous can be used in the presence of a time phrase!" The student argued.

"The sentence does not show when it rained," I explained. "but how long it had been raining within a period, In this case, the past perfect continuous is correctly used."

Pouting her lips, the student sat down looking unhappy.

During recess, an experienced teacher who had been teaching for 30 years came up to my desk and said, "Mr. Lo, a student told me that you had made an error in class but you did not admit it."

"Oh, she told you everything," I gasped. "But I did not make a single error!"

"The sentence should be It was raining cats and dogs for three days," she said. "No past perfect continuous can be used if a time phrase is present in a sentence."

"No, I'm right," I insisted. "The past perfect continuous shows the start of the rain in the past and how it continued up until another time in the past."

"Come on," said the woman. "I'm telling you this from my experience. It's for your own good."

"But I am definitely sure that I'm right," I reaffirmed my stand.

"That's your problem," she retorted. "I've done my part. Teachers should be role models to students."

With that said, she threw me a glare and returned to her seat.

I had a hard time stilling the tremor of emotions within me.

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