Understanding the English Past Tense

The past tense in English is used to talk about actions or situations that happened in the past. Like the present tense, it also has several forms, each with its own specific use. Let’s break them down:

Past Tenses	Past Simple	Past Continuous	Past Perfect	Past Perfect Continuous
Usages	1. Before now. 2. Finished events in the past	1. In the middle of doing something. 2. For a time before now.	Past equivalent of Present Perfect.	Long actions in the  past that had been  going on until the past moment.
Examples	Verbs end in ed I worked. I played. I worked. I didn’t work. Did you work?	was, were + verb-ing She was listening to the radio. I was working. Was she working? He was drawing a picture.	Had Had not + past participle She had worked in France. I had lost my keys.	Had been Had not been + verb-ing Jim had been working for 2 hours.

Simple Past Tense

• Use:
  • Completed actions in the past.
  • Habits or routines in the past.
  • A series of past events.
• Structure:
  • For most verbs: base form of the verb + -ed.
  • For irregular verbs: special past tense forms.
• Examples:
  • I walked to school yesterday.
  • She lived in London for five years.
  • We visited many museums on our trip.

Simple Past:

Subject	Verb (Past)	Example
I/You/He/She/It/We/They	Walked	I walked to school yesterday.

Past Continuous Tense (Past Progressive)

• Use:
  • Actions that were in progress at a specific time in the past.
  • Background actions while another action was happening.
• Structure:
  • Subject + was/were + verb + -ing
• Examples:
  • I was watching TV when the phone rang.
  • She was walking to work when she saw an accident.
  • We were eating dinner when the lights went out.

Past Continuous:

Subject	was/were	Verb + -ing	Example
I/He/She/It	was	Walking	I was walking to school yesterday.
You/We/They	were	Walking	They were walking to school yesterday.

Past Perfect Tense

• Use:
  • Actions that happened before another action in the past.
  • To show that one past action was completed before another past action began.
• Structure:
  • Subject + had + past participle (e.g., eaten, gone, seen)
• Examples:
  • I had eaten lunch before I went to the movies.
  • She had studied English for two years before she moved to the United States.
  • We had never met before we started working together.

Past Perfect:

Subject	had	Past Participle	Example
I/You/He/She/It/We/They	had	Walked	I had walked to school before I went to the store.

Past Perfect Continuous Tense (Past Perfect Progressive)

• Use:
  • Actions that started in the past and continued up to another point in the past.
  • To emphasize the duration of a past action.
• Structure:
  • Subject + had + been + verb + -ing
• Examples:
  • I had been studying for three hours before I took the test.
  • She had been working on the project all day before she finished it.
  • We had been playing soccer for an hour before it started to rain.

Past Perfect Continuous:

Subject	had	been	Verb + -ing	Example
I/You/He/She/It/We/They	had	been	Walking	I had been walking for an hour before I got tired.

Learn about Present Tense – Present Tense – Simple, Continuous and Perfect

Learn more about Future Tense – Future Tense – Simple, Continuous and Perfect