Read present and past tense1/3/2024 ![]() Verb tenses always show the perspective of the person who uses them, not necessarily the complete reality.įor example, I could say 'My friend Chris was living in Vietnam last summer', which refers only to last summer in whatever the context is. In other words, we can speak about an action as only existing in the past, but in fact later on we can discover that, or think of it, as something that is still happening. What I was trying to say was that an action that we speak about in the past can also conceivably continue into the present, even if we don't speak about it that way. The continuous aspect doesn't focus on the beginning or end of an action, but of course a past continuous form refers to a past action, which by definition occurred before now. I won't comment directly on your examples as they contain a few errors and the very 'wear' (rather than 'put on' or 'take') is problematic and would need a very long explanation of a very unlikely context. You can see from this that the context and intent of the speaker is key. If the earlier event affects the later situation in some important way, then we link them using a perfect form. It's not only a question of sequence, but of relevance. You can find our pages on the use of the past perfect here:Īs you'll see from the information on those pages, we use perfect forms, whether present, past or future, when the earlier event has an influence on the later event. We can also use the past continuous to refer to the present or future in hypotheses (when we imagine something). Level: intermediate Past continuous and hypotheses MultipleSelection_MTY2NDE= Past continuous and past simple When I got home, I really needed(NOT was needing) a shower. We do not normally use the past continuous with stative verbs. with verbs which show change or growth:.I was practising every day, three times a day. for something that happened again and again:.to show that something continued for some time:.I was writing a letter.Ĭompare: At eight o'clock I wrote (= started writing) some letters. for something that happened before and after a specific time:.The other day I was waiting for a bus when … ![]() This use of the past continuous is very common at the beginning of a story: The children were doing their homework when I got home.Ĭompare: The children did their homework when (= after) I got home. We use the past continuous to talk about the past:įor something which happened before and after another action: The past continuous is made from the past tense of the verb be and the –ing form of a verb: ![]()
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