I was studying and studying for hundreds of hours.

Question

I was studying and studying for hundreds of hours. (0:57 in the video below)https://www.englishcoachchad.com/p/action Is the above sentence acceptable to native speakers?

Clive · Accepted Answer

CalifJim · Answer

TeoI was studying and studying for hundreds of hours. ...
Is the above sentence acceptable to native speakers?

To most of them I'd say. Nevertheless, personally I am somewhat dissatisfied with the combination of past continuous with a for-phrase that gives an amount of time. I prefer the past simple in this pattern.

I studied (and studied) for hundreds of hours.

The Google Books Ngram Viewer finds the following number of hits for each of the word groups below:

was studying for hours 0
was swimming for hours 0
was driving for hours 0
was reading for hours 0
was working for hours 0
was sleeping for hours 0
was waiting for hours 1

Quite surprising, I think.

And you get a lot of hits for every one of those in the simple past:

studied / swam / drove / read / worked / slept / waited [for hours]

CJ

I was studying and studying for hundreds of hours.

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