Hearing the term ‘past continuous’ can be confusing. How can something in the past, but continue? Past continuous helps us describe actions that were ongoing in the past. This is usually when the action was interrupted and we’re explaining what happened before we were interrupted.
Mastering the past continuous tense will help you better express yourself and improve your communication skills. Whether in the office, at a party or even when you decide to write the book you’ve always wanted to. Here we’ll discuss the rules, and how and when to use them, with examples and exercises!
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In this sentence “I was eating” is the interrupted action.
The structure above is not the only way we can use past continuous. Were can also use “were” instead of “was”.
Past continuous can also be used to talk about actions that happened at the same time. Here is an example below, that will show how both of these concepts work.
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In this sentence, his friends were eating at the same time as he was telling them a story.
With both structures, we use past continuous to talk about actions that happened at a specific time in the past.
Looking at the examples above we can see that we use “was” and “were” for different instances. We use “was” when we are talking about a single person. This is true for positive sentences, negative sentences, and for questions.
However, when we ask someone about themselves, we don’t use “was” even if it’s just about a single person.
We usually use “were” when we are talking about multiple people. This is true for positive sentences, negative sentences, and for questions.
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Now that we’ve discussed how to use past continuous tense, with examples. Here are some activities to check your understanding!
Fill in the correct verb to be: was or were?
John ___ cooking dinner, when his friends arrived.
What ___ you doing while your sister was studying?
Sam ___ painting the walls when Sarah got home.
They ___ swimming when their mother was cooking.
___ you eating while your Juliet was cleaning?
Rewrite the bold into past continuous.
Fill in the correct verb to be: was or were?
Rewrite the bold into past continuous.
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