Past continuous vs past simple

Look at the sentences below. The first sentence is in the past simple. The second sentence is in the past continuous.

“I watched a movie last night”.

“I was watching a movie last night”.

The past simple.

Subject + verb + –ed

***

I / you / she / he / it / they + watch + ed

Example

“I watched a good movie yesterday”.

We use the past simple for activities that were finished in the past. We usually use a time word/phrase.

Example

“He worked late (last night)”.

Here, ‘last night’ is what we consider a time phrase (remember the previous blog post?).

Example

“I bought a new T-shirt (yesterday)”.

Here, ‘yesterday’ is also a time frame or a ‘time word’.

Past continuous

Subject + was + verb + –ing

***

 I / you / she / he / it + was + verb + –ing

they / we + was + verb + –ing

“I was watching a good movie last night”.

“We were watching a good movie last night”.

Important note

You don’t need to worry about regular and irregular verbs when you’re using the past continuous because all past continuous, whether they are regular or not, are formed by using the past tense of the verb to be (was / were), the base form of the verb and –ing.

Example

“He was working late (last night)”.

“I was buying a T-shirt when I saw her (yesterday)”.

The past continuous is used for activities that started and finished in the past, but we want to emphasise duration. You want to show the other person that you are talking with, the other listener or reader, that it lasted for quite some time. So, you use a time word/phrase.

Example

“He was working (all night)”.

Note

‘All night’ is another time phrase.

We also use the past continuous to talk about an ongoing action in the past that was interrupted suddenly by something else. In that case you can use the phrase ‘when suddenly’ or ‘when all of a sudden’ after the object.

Example

“I was paying for /my shopping/ (when all of a sudden), [I saw my friend]”.

Important note

For the interruption [I saw my friend] we use the past simple. The past continuous shows us that it was a continuing activity, and the past simple shows us the interruption of that activity.

It’s as simple as that.

Exercise

 #Try creating some of your own sentences using what you have just learned here. They don’t just have to be sentences, you could write a short story about something that really happened to you, or about something that you really like.

 #look for any grammar or spelling mistakes I may have made writing this post.