Learn Past Continuous Tense | Basic English Grammar Course

Hi, everybody. I'm Esther.

In this video. I will introduce the past continuous tense.

This tense can be used to describe an action that was ongoing in the past.

It can also be used to describe two actions happening at the same time in the past.

There's a lot to learn so let's get started.

Let's take a look at the first usage of the past continuous tense.

This tense can be used to describe an action that was ongoing in the past.

Let's take a look at these examples.

‘I was walking in the park in the evening.’

So first we start with the subject, ‘I’.

For I, he, she, and it, we follow with ‘was’. ‘I was’

And then we add an ‘ING’ to the end of the verb.

‘I was walking’

Now take a look at the whole sentence.

‘I was walking in the park in the evening.’

You can see that this was an ongoing action and it happened in the past.

Let's look at the next example.

‘She was living here last year.’

Here, the subject is ‘she’.

So again we use ‘was’ and then ‘verb-ing’.

Here we have another expression that shows that this action was happening in the past.

‘The dog,’ or ‘it’, ‘was eating dinner five minutes ago.’

The subject here is ‘the dog’ which can be replaced by the pronoun ‘it’.

And so we follow with ‘was’.

And finally, ‘Andy and Jim,’ we can replace this with ‘they’.

For ‘you’, ‘we’ and ‘they’, we use ‘were’.

‘They were’, or ‘Andy and Jim were working at 9:00 p.m.’

Let's move on.

The past continuous tense is also used to describe an ongoing

action in the past that was interrupted by another action.

This interrupting action is used in the past simple tense with the word ‘when’.

Let's take a look at this example.

‘I was playing cards when you called.’

Again we start with the subject ‘was’ or ‘were’,

and then ‘verb-ing’,

so this is the action that was ongoing in the past,

‘I was playing cards’

The interrupting action in this sentence is ‘you called’.

You'll notice I use the word ‘when’ to show the interrupting action’

And I used it in the past simple tense, ‘called’.

Let's take a look at the next sentence.

‘The cat' or 'it' was eating when Eric came home.’

Again the action in progress is ‘the cat was eating’.

And ‘Eric came home’, you'll notice the past simple tense.

This is the interrupting action used with the word ‘when’.

‘We were sleeping when Anne arrived.’

Again we have the ongoing action in the past.

The subject here is ‘we’. And so we used ‘were’ and then ‘verb-ing’.

‘When Anne arrived’ is the interrupting action.

And finally, ‘Alicia and I’, or ‘We' were walking when we saw Mark.’

‘When we saw Mark’ is the interrupting action that interrupted the ongoing ‘Alicia and I were walking’.

It's also important to note that we can also switch the order of the sentence around and say,

‘When you called, I was playing cards,’

or ‘When Eric came home, the cat was eating.’

Let's move on.

Another usage for the past continuous tense is to talk about two actions that were

happening at the same time in the past.

We use the past continuous tense for both actions with the word ‘while’.

Let's take a look at some examples.

The first sentence says, ‘While I was playing soccer, she was watching me.’

You'll notice that both actions are in the past continuous tense.

‘I was playing soccer’ and ‘She was watching me’.

The word ‘while’ at the beginning shows that these actions were happening at the sametime.

‘While you were reading, I was preparing dinner.’

Again both actions are expressed in the past continuous tense.

The word ‘while’ shows that they were happening at the same time.

‘While Her husband’ or ‘he’, ‘was driving she was taking pictures.’

Both actions are in the past continuous tense.

And finally,

‘While we were eating, the music was playing.’

Both actions were happening at the same time.

Now, you'll notice that in my examples the word ‘while’ comes at the beginning,

however, it's important to note that you can move the word ‘while’ around in several ways.

For example, instead of saying this,

‘While I was playing soccer, she was watching me.’

I can move ‘while’ to the middle of the sentence.

‘I was playing soccer while she was watching me.’

I can put the ‘while’ between the two actions.

Or I can also change the sentence around and say,

‘While she was watching me, I was playing soccer.’

So it doesn't matter which action comes first with the ‘while’ if you put it in the beginning.

Let's move on.

Now let's talk about the negative form of the past continuous tense.

Here are some examples.

‘She was not reading last night.’

The subject is ‘she’ and so we use ‘was’.

However, before the ‘verb-ing’, we add ‘not’.

‘She was not reading last night.’

I can use a contraction and say,

‘She wasn't reading last night.’

‘We were not listening to music this morning.’

In this case, the subject is ‘we’ and so we use ‘were’.

Again ‘not’ comes before the ‘verb-ing’.

‘We were not listening to music this morning.’

Again I can use a contraction and say,

‘We weren't listening to music this morning.’

And the next one says, ‘He wasn't watching TV when his dad came home.’

In this example, the contraction is already there for you,

‘He wasn't watching TV’.

You'll notice the word ‘when’.

Remember ‘when’ + ‘a past simple tense verb’ shows an interrupting action,

so, ‘When his dad came home he wasn't watching TV.’

He was doing something else.

And finally,

‘They weren't talking while the game was playing.’

The word ‘while’ is in this sentence.

Remember that shows 2 past ongoing actions happening at the same time,

so ‘While the game was playing they weren't talking’.

They were doing something else.

Let's move on now.

Let's talk about how to form ‘be’ verb questions for the past continuous tense.

Take a look at the first statement.

It says,

‘It was raining this morning.’

In order to turn this into a question, it's quite easy,

all we have to do is change the order of the first two words.

Instead of ‘It was’, I now say ‘Was it’ to make it a question.

You'll notice that the rest of the words stay in the same place.

‘Was it raining this morning?’

You can answer by saying, ‘Yes, it was.’ or ‘No, it wasn't.’

The next statement says,

‘They were living there when the fire happened.’

To turn this into a big question, again we just switched the order of the first two words.

Instead of ‘They were’, we say ‘Were they’.

And again, the rest of the words can stay in the same place.

‘Were they living there when the fire happened?’

And you can answer by saying,

‘Yes, they were’ or ‘No, they weren't.’

Let's continue on.

Now I'll go into how to make WH questions for the past continuous tense.

You'll notice that the examples here all begin with some WH words.

For example, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘why’, and ‘who’.

Let's take a look at the first question.

‘What were they doing last night?”

The subject of this sentence is ‘they’.

So what you do is after the WH word you put the proper ‘be’ verb.

In this case, ‘were’.

‘What were they doing last night?’

You'll notice that after the subject comes the ‘verb-ing’.

‘What were they doing last night?’

I can answer by saying, ‘They were playing games’ or

‘They were reading a book’.

The next question says,

‘Where was he working last week?’

In this case the subject is ‘he’ and so the be verb to use is ‘was’.

‘Where was he working last week?’

I can say, ‘He was working in Canada.’

‘Why was she crying when she finished the book?’

In this case, the subject is ‘she’ and so I put ‘was’ after ‘why’.

‘Why was she crying when she finished the book?’

I can say, ‘She was crying because the ending was sad.’

And finally,

‘Who were the children staying with while their mom was working?’

In this case, ‘the children’ is a ‘they’

so we follow 'who' with ‘were’.

‘Who were they’ or

‘Who were the children staying with while their mom was working?’

To answer, I can say, ‘The children’ or

‘They were staying with their dad.’

Let's move on.

Good job, everybody in learning the past continuous tense.

This tense can be a little difficult and a little tricky.

Especially, when it comes to the ‘when’ and ‘while’ usage.

It'll take some practice to really master it, but I know you can do it.

Keep studying English and I'll see you in the next video.