Past Continuous - usage, formation, examples.

This lecture is on the Past Continuous Tense.

The Past Continuous expresses an unfinished or incomplete action in the past.

And the Past Continuous is also known as the past Progressive.

And verbs that refer to emotions or desires don’t usually take the continuous form.

Things like fear love hate etc.

If you fear something you always fear it, So you choose you wouldn’t use a continuous form for that.

And please bear in mind that your native language may not have a continuous form.

The Past Continuous is used for incomplete actions that happened earlier, to describe a story’s background, To indicate a change of mind, to emphasize duration, for old habits that no longer happen and in reported speech.

Says how we formed the past continuous: in positive cases subject plus was or were plus verb plus ing, as a I was eating ice cream.

as a negative: subject plus was or were plus not plus verb plus ing, we weren’t eating ice cream.

as a question: was or were subject plus 4 plus ing.

Was she eating ice cream?

or as a negative question: was or were not Plus subject plus 4 plus ing, wasn’t he eating ice cream.

and so there are some examples.

for incomplete actions that happened in the past:

I was shopping when you called.

he was working yesterday evening.

and in both cases they carried on shopping or working, there hadn’t finished.

to describe the story’s background:

as the sun was setting he took out the ring and proposed.

I was having such a lovely dream, when the alarm went off.

so we used the past continuous to form the background, as it as the sun was setting.

indicated change of mind:

I was going to watch a film, but I cleaned the house instead.

or I was going to clean the house but ended up playing on the computer.

which one matches you the best.

to emphasize duration:

I was working on that new project all weekend

I could of course said I worked on that project all weekend, but by seeing I was working on that project, it emphasizes the duration.

as does They were playing cards all night.

for old habits that no longer happen:

He was always forgetting his keys.

she was always singing in the shower.

and for this context we often use words like always, often, frequently and the thing to bear in mind is that him now he remembers his keys or she no longer sings in the shower.

and for reported speech:

so was reported speech we always drop back attends when we report what somebody said.

so if somebody said I am saving to buy a new car, when we report it we say he said he was saving to buy a new car.

or we are planning a holiday and when we report it we would say they said they were planning their holiday.