Hi,
I’d like some help on that, please.
Which would be the correct option here, the simple past, the present perfct continuous or both?
“If you were a parent of a kid who was being bullied, what would you do?”
If I were the parent of a kid who was being bullied (who has been bullied), I would talk to…
Hi Thomas47,
Both would be fine and focus on duration:
Sentence number 1 focuses on an ongoing situation in the past, whereas number 2 focuses on a situation starting at some moment in the past that may or may not continue up to the present state of affairs.
May I also draw your attention to the following:
‘Who has been bullied’ is the present perfect passive. It can also serve as a passive form of the present perfect continuous, because, ‘Who has been being bullied’ while linguistically and theoretically correct, is overly complicated. No speaker of English - native or non-native - is likely to use it in conversation or writing.
I hope I’ve given you a satisfactory answer.
Yeah, Masme, you have, and thank you also for drawing my attention to the Past Perfect Passive.
They are both legitimate. But the tense in the question should be the same as the tense in the answer. There is no reason to change it.
It feels like dismissing grammatical precision makes more sense than prioritizing consistency. Both are equally important. In my opinion, your addtional information is often beside the point.
I said present perfect passive. The past perfect passive would be as following: “Who had been bullied.” Okay?
I think you could also say: If I were the parent of a bullied kid, I would talk to … (Here the question of confusion of the tense does not arise. It states the fact of having been bullied though not ‘being bullied’).
I like your reply, Lawrence.
Thank you all for the replies to my question.
You’re welcome, dear.