Past Simple and Past continuous tense
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Past simple and past continuous
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When to use past countinous
Past simple and past continuous are two tenses used to express actions in the past.
What differentiates them is the status of the action they describe.
The past simple refers to an action that finished in the past, while the past
continuous refers to an action that was in progress at the time of speaking.
In this article, you’ll learn how and when to use these two tenses.
Past simple in English
Past simple is a verb tense used to talk about things that happened and finished in
the past.
You form the past simple of regular verbs by adding “-ed” to their infinitive form:
turn → turned
cook → cooked
learn → learned
As for irregular verbs, you will have to learn their past simple form by heart. But
don’t worry, you’ll learn them quickly with little practise.
When to use the past simpleWe use the past simple to talk about an action that
happened and concluded in the past. It’s not necessary to specify the time the
action refers to. Check the following examples:
Tom wrote a letter to Jim asking for an explanation.
I heard a sudden noise, and I ran to check what caused it.
The actions expressed in the sentences happened in the past and are now finished.
In the first example, Tom completed the action of writing his letter. In the second
one, the noise was on for a brief moment, and so I started running until I reached
the noise’s origin and understood its origin.
Note that the actions happened in an unspecified time in the past, but it is perfectly
fine to specify it if you wish.
Tom wrote a letter
yesterday
, or
last week
, or
10 minutes ago
.
The meaning of the sentence stays the same. What matters is that the action of
writing the letter started and finished in the past.
Past continuous
Past continuous is a verb tense used to talk about actions that were in progress at
the time of speaking.
You form it by combining the past simple of the verb “to be” (was/were) with the
gerund (“-ing” form) of the verb expressing the action:
I saw that you were running to catch the bus last night.
Tom was writing a letter to Sarah a moment ago.
When to use the past continuous
We use the past continuous to talk about an action that was still ongoing at the time
of speaking. It’s used for actions that last a certain amount of time, not something
you do at once.
Since the action described by past continuous is in progress at a specific time, you
need to specify the time, or the sentence ends up making no sense.
Check the examples to see what I mean:
Sarah was waiting for the bus last night.
Sarah was waiting for the bus.
The second sentence doesn’t really make sense, because it gives no context.
I was drinking tea when the burglar entered my home.
I was drinking tea.
Just like the example above, we can’t really understand the meaning of the second
sentence without extra information.
If you don’t specify the time, it’s impossible to understand the meaning of a
sentence with the past continuous.
However, there is one exception: you can avoid specifying the time if you are
answering a question that already stated it:
I couldn’t call you
yesterday
, what happened? I was working overtime.
It is implicit that the responder was working
yesterday
when the person asking
couldn’t reach them.
Combining past simple and past continuous
We use these two tenses together when we want to talk about an event that
happened during the action expressed by the past continuous.
This construction emphasises the sentence in past simple and uses the past
continuous as a way to provide more information. You’ll mostly see these tenses
combined in stories.
Here are a couple of examples:
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