We use this tense in English to talk about events or situations that are finished. Normally we use a time reference.
For example:
"Last year I went to Spain."
"In 1997, he changed his job."
"She called an hour ago."
We also use the Past Simple tense in English to talk about long-lasting events or situations in the past.
"When I was a child, I lived in the countryside."
To talk about repeated activites in the past, we also use the Past Simple.
"I often went to the beach as a child."
Past Continuous Tense ("I was doing")
There are three main uses of this tense:
1. To talk about what was happening at a particular time in the past and to give descriptions and background information.
2. To talk about temporary situations in the past.
3. To make polite requests.
1. Talking about what was happening at a particular time in the past.
"This time yesterday, I was reading a book."
We often use the Past Continuous tense with the Past Simple tense. The Past Continuous gives the background to an event in the Past Simple:
"When he got home, the children were playing in the garden." (The children started playing in the garden before he got home.)
"I was eating dinner when there was a knock on the door." (The knock on the door came in the middle of my meal.)
We can use the Past Continuous to give descriptions.
"The girl was wearing a yellow dress. She was eating ice-cream and was watching television."
2. Talking about temporary situations in the past.
"When I was living in London, I often went to the theatre." (Living in London was temporary - perhaps I only lived there for a short while.)
Compare with: "When I was a child I lived in the countryside." Living in the countryside was a longer event - I was a child for more than a couple of years. For more permanent situations, we use the Past Simple tense.
3. Making polite requests.
If we want to make polite requests, we can use the Past Continuous tense. This is because we put a distance between ourselves and the person we are asking.
"I was wondering if you had time to see me."
"I was hoping we could discuss a pay raise."
5 comments on “Past tenses in English”
now i can differentiate the different btw past continous and past tense.
thats great.
i had improved myself.
thanks.
now i am trying to differentiate btn past tense and past continuos tense, so continue to help me
I really appreciate your affort to teach us good english, but i have a doubt about this sentence"I was wondering if you had a time to see me" so why we have to use HAD instead of HAVE.The meaning of this sentence is like you are hoping to see you by someone means you have not seen yet so why do we have to use HAD? please clear my concept.
I think it would also be correct to use "have", but as "was wondering" is in the past continuous, using "had" helps to maintain the sense of distance that we use when we want to be very polite.
Thnax for teaching as a good way but i didn't understand the 3rd point of using the past continuous tense to make a polite request.
We just use this tense in polite, formal situations. We could also say "Could I…" or "Would you…" but the past continuous creates a distance between us and the other person, so is considered very polite.
Hey its simply wondefull !!!!!! Thank you so much for creating such a dynamic site to help people improve their english.i just have no words to describe.I will recommend all the office collegues to go through the site as we all work in a call center and its very important that we frame our sentences properly while giving service to our customers in UK.Its just marvellous.