过去完成进行时与过去完成时之间的关系，同现在完成进行时与现在完成时之间的关系一样。它的用法与现在完成进行时的用法基本相同，只是将“坐标时间”移到过去。同样是强调动作的持续性，表示开始于过去某一时刻之前的动作持续到过去这一时刻，并可能仍将继续持续下去。
（1）强调在过去的某一时刻之前一直在持续的一项活动，且该活动可能仍将继续持续下去

 
例句
a. When I arrived in Inner Mongolia, it had been snowing for half a month.
b. She had been studying French for one year before she went to France.
（2）强调在过去的某一时刻之前一直在持续的一项活动，活动持续到过去这一时刻为止，或者是在这一时刻之前刚刚结束

 
例句
a. The police had been looking for the murderer for two years before they caught him.
b. He finally showed up at nine o’clock. I had been waiting for him since six o’clock.
c. When she arrived, I had been waiting in the cold for three hours.
d. I had been looking for jobs for nearly half a year before I finally got a position in this dot-com company.
e. When the boys came into the house, their clothes were dirty, their hair was untidy and one of them had a black eye. I knew they had been fighting.
f.There was nobody in the room but there was a smell of cigarettes.Somebody had been smoking in the room.
g. The plane, which had been waiting on the runway for hours, finally got clearance for take-off.
（3）可表示过去某一时刻之前的一段时间内重复发生的动作
例句
a. He had been gambling for two years before his wife found out.
b. I had been trying to get her on the phone. Finally she gave me a call.
我一直试着打电话找她，最后她给我回了个电话。
同样，这里的重复动作不能说出具体次数。我们可以说：
I had tried five times to get her on the phone before she finally gave me a call.
我打了五次电话去找她，她终于给我回了电话。
而不能说：I had been trying five times…*