Past Continuous

1

Past Continuous

1. Form

Was/were + present participle (-ing)

Example: Affirmative Form: I/he/she/it was working

you/we/they were working

Negative Form: I/he/she/it wasn’t working

you/we/they weren’t working

Question Form: Was I/he/she/it working?

Were you/we/they flying?

2. Use

• We use the past continuous when an action happened at a specific moment or

period of time in the past.

6 am PAST PRESENT FUTURE7 am

Eg. At 6.30 I was reading a book. (I started at 6.00 and I finished at 7.00)

Past Continuous

2

• We use the past continuous to describe a specific action happening over a period of

time in the past.

PAST PRESENT FUTURE

January

Eg. In January I was studying for my driving license.

• We use the past continuous when two or more actions were happening at the same

time in the past

Eg. At 3pm I was driving my car and speaking on the phone, and that’s why I got a fine.

Past Simple and Past Continuous

We normally use the past simple to indicate an action which interrupted an action

happening over a longer period of time.

Eg. I was cooking dinner for my family when somebody knocked on the door.

(in this case, the “cooking dinner” is the longer action and the “knocked” is the action which

interrupted the other).

However, when two actions followed another, the past simple must be used for both.

PAST PRESENT FUTURE

Past Continuous

3

Eg. Joanne got up, had a shower and ran for the bus.

While and When

While and when are sometimes in sentences when talking about past actions. While is

normally used to describe the longer action and should be used with the past continuous.

Eg. While I was watching the news, I heard a noise.

When is normally accompanied by the past simple tense.

Eg. When he phoned, I was driving.

Adverbs used with the past continuous We often use the past continuous with an adverb such as always to describe an irritating

fact that happened in the past.

Eg. He was always making the same mistake!