Past Continuous

Hello! Today I’m going to tell you about the past continuous. Some people call this the past progressive. When I was learning grammar we called it the past continuous, so that’s what I’m going to call it. It’s the same thing. All right, we’re going to talk first about the form, which is how to make the past continuous, then we’re going to talk about the function, which is how to use it, and at the end of the video, I have a little quiz I’d like you to try. Let’s get started. First of all. the form: how to make the past continuous. So for positive sentences, or sometimes we say affirmative sentences, we have the subject, we have an auxiliary verb, and then we have the present participle, which most people just call the ing form or the I-N-G form. Notice how the subjects are grouped: I and he and she and it, even though I didn’t write it, use “was” as their auxiliary verb you and we and they use “were” as their auxiliary verb. The present participle or the I-N-G form is the form of the verb that comes at the end, so what makes the difference is the auxiliary verb that we use, whether we use was or were instead of am or is or are, okay? So this is where we make this verb be the past continuous instead of the present continuous. So for negative sentences, all we do is we add a “not” Now that’s quite simple. There’s something that we often do after that that makes it a little bit more complicated, which is that we put was and were together with “not” and so we end up with these contractions, wasn’t and weren’t instead of wh… was not and we’re not. Okay so continuing from there, we’re going to take a look at yes/no questions. So we go back to where we were, and then all we do is we switch the position of the auxiliary verb and the subject. Now, this is the beginning of a sentence, so really there should be a capital W and this should be a capital W as well, but you get the idea. Was I singing? Were you laughing? Okay so yes/no questions – we call these yes/no questions of course because the answer will be yes or no. One other type of question and that is WH questions and there we stay with how we have a sentence for our yes/no questions. We then just add our question word, okay, we just add that to the front. Nothing else changes. So, what was I thinking? Why were you running? Let’s take a look now at the function; how to use the past continuous. We use the past continuous in a couple of different ways. The first way we’re going to look at is that actions that were in progress when they were interrupted by another action. So something was happening and then something else happened to stop that. So take a look at our timeline here. Something was happening and then something else happened that interrupted it. Now what happened after that? Did the action continue? We don’t know; it doesn’t matter, okay? That’s not the information we’re trying to communicate, okay? So what we’re talking about is: this was happening and then this happened and interrupted it. What happens out here? We don’t know, we don’t care; it doesn’t matter for the past continuous. It also doesn’t matter when that was. Was it last year? Was it this morning? It doesn’t matter; we can use the past continuous for any time where these conditions are met, where something has happened and then something else interrupted it. So let’s take a look here. I was watching TV when the phone rang. So the phone [that] rang interrupted what I was doing. They were talking – sorry, they weren’t talking, they were walking; they might have been talking as well, but this just says they were walking. They were walking when they smelled smoke. The smelling of smoke interrupted their walking. She was talking when they heard a noise. Okay? So, again hearing a noise interrupted the talking. We also use the past continuous when two actions were happening at the same time. So here again is our timeline. Here’s one action, here is another action. Now watch this: it doesn’t matter which one started first, it doesn’t matter which one ends first, it doesn’t matter how much they overlap or when they overlap, but when they overlap is when we can use the past continuous. So you can see here just inside this green line when both things are happening and then just inside this red line, okay, both actions are happening at the same time. That’s when we can use the past continuous. We often use “while” in these sentences: While I was cooking dinner, she was reading a book. Who started first? Who ended first? It doesn’t matter; we don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. Tthe point is for some of the time, we were doing both of those things at the same time. While John was sleeping, his sister was working hard. Again, who started first? Who finished first? It doesn’t matter. While we were talking, they were riding their bikes. So for at least part of the time that we were doing this they were doing that. Finally, While he was playing soccer, she was flying a kite. Again, both of these things were happening at the same time and again. I’d just like to point out we very often use “while” in this type of sentence, and see that in all those examples. We can also switch the order of the clauses. I’ll just go back here: While I was cooking dinner, she was reading a book. She was reading a book while I was cooking dinner. While John was sleeping, his sister was working hard. His sister was working hard while John was sleeping. While we were walking, they were riding their bikes. They were riding their bikes while we were walking. While he was playing soccer, she was flying a kite. She was flying a kite while he was playing soccer. Now you may or may not have noticed that the commas all disappeared. That’s not a mistake; that’s very much on purpose. The clause that starts with “while” is a dependent clause, and when the dependent clause comes second, or it comes later in the sentence, we do not use a comma. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, but you would like to know what I’m talking about, check out my videos on clauses and sentences – two different videos. We also use the past continuous when an action was happening at a specific time in the past. So earlier, we were looking at it this way, where an action was happening and then something interrupted it. okay? That’s not what we’re looking at here. What we’re looking at here is at this time, this thing was happening, so we’re kind of looking at it backwards. An example hopefully we’ll make this clearer. I was travelling in June. The forest fire was burning in August. In 2006, I was living in Taiwan. So in all these examples, I’m saying at this time, this thing was happening, okay? And, at two o’clock, he was walking home. So at a specific time, something else was going on so and actually was happening at a specific time in the past. So here’s our quiz: Correct or not. and why? I’m going to put up ten questions, or ten sentences. I would like you to look at them and to decide, in the context of looking at the past continuous, if these sentences are correct or not, and if they’re not correct, what is wrong? What do we need to do to fix them? Okay, here they are. Pause the video and then I will give you the answers. Okay let’s take a look. So first of all, here’s the answers. So some of them are correct, some of them are incorrect.Tthe ones that are incorrect, we’ll take a look at now. I watched TV when the phone was ringing. Well, that’s not progressive is it? It’s not continuous. I was watching the TV when the phone rang, okay? So this is the longer action – was watching TV – was interrupted by this verb in the present [past] simple: the phone rang. We were liking the movie. We don’t use like in the continuous, okay? We were liking the movie? No, it just doesn’t work. We liked the movie; we can’t use it in the continuous. It’s, it’s… this, in theory, this sentence is correct, except for the fact that this verb doesn’t work in the continuous. Oops! There we go. He drank water when he choked nnno. He was drinking water when he choked. So the choking interrupted the drinking of the water. It was snowing at five o’clock. So at five o’clock, what was happening? It was snowing. Number five: They are walking to the store. Well, there’s nothing wrong with this, except for the fact that we have used a present verb, okay? So they were, because this is the past continuous that we want, not the present continuous. Number six: My friends were eating and drinking. No problem. Number seven: Grace were eating when I called her. That’s a problem with the verb here. Grace was eating when I called her. Number eight and number nine are both correct. Number ten: They was enjoying the picnic. Again, a problem with the auxiliary verb here. They were enjoying the picnic. So how did you do? If you’d like some more practice, I’ve prepared some more exercises, so just look below this video and you’ll be able to get to those. Okay, thank you very much! Have a good day!