Past Progressive: Rules, Formation & Examples

The past progressive, also called past continuous, is a tense that Course of longer actions or events in the past describes. In contrast to the Simple Past, the Past Progressive indicates that an action or event lasted for some time but has now been completed.

That Simple past corresponds to the German past tense and describes a one-time short action in the past that has already ended. If you would like a repetition of this tense, please have a look at the article «Simple Past»!

Just like the present progressive, there is no equivalent in German for the past progressive. However, the past progressive is often used in English in different situations. Therefore, in this explanation, you will learn how to form it correctly and when to use it best with the help of helpful examples.

Past Progressive Education and Rules

Generally, the past progressive becomes simple with the conjugated form of the verb to beWhat or were – and one present participle (ing-form of the verb) formed.

positive statements

The normal sentence structure for positive statements then looks like this: subject + What/were + present participle + rest of the sentence. You can see a few examples here:

I What playing video games all night with my friends.

They were eating dinner with some friends.

In the first example you use the word Whatbecause the subject I (1st person singular) it requires. from the verb to play becomes the present participle playing. In the second example, however, the subject requires they (3rd person plural) the word were and from the verb to eat becomes eating.

The present participle is just the ing form of a verb. With this you form the present progressive if you want to describe that something is happening – so it is a continuous action in the present. As the name suggests, the present participle is used in the past progressive to represent a longer action in the past.

If you What or were use depends on the respective subject away. You can find a repetition in the table below:

subjectWhat or were1st person singular IWhat2nd person singular youwere3rd person singular he / she / itWhat1st person plural wewere2nd person plural youwere3rd person pluraltheywere

Past progressive negation

You form negative statements in the past progressive by following the conjugation of the verb to be (What or were) just the word not add It then looks like this: subject + What/were + not + present participle + rest of the sentence. So you could form sentences like this:

No, I wasn’t playing video games all night with my friends.

They weren’t eating dinner with some friends.

Frequently, in the negative statements in the past progressive, the short forms wasn’t and weren’t used. In the already known examples it would look like this:

No, I wasn’t playing video games all night with my friends.

They weren’t eating dinner with some friends.

Past Progressive Questions

To ask questions in the past progressive, you just have to change the sentence structure slightly. That would look like this: What/were + subject + present participle + rest of the sentence.

why what hey playing video games all night with his friends?

Where were they eating dinner with some friends?

In the examples, the question words why and where used. If you would like a repetition of the question words in English, then have a look at the article «Question words in English»!

As you can see in the two examples, the constructions became simple what hey playing such as were they eating used instead hey what playing and they were eating.

Past progressive indirect speech

If you want to use the past progressive in reported speech, the form changes quite significantly, but forming them isn’t all that difficult – What or were gets through had been replaced. What makes things even easier is that had been does not change with the subject. So all you have to remember is this pattern: Subject + had been + present participle + rest of the sentence.

In the following table you can see an example of how the same sentence with the past progressive is formulated in both direct and indirect speech.

direct speechdirect speechShe said: «I was walking to school.»She said (that) she had been going to school.

In the direct speech example, the person is quoted directly, that is, you repeat exactly what they said. But to rephrase that in reported speech, simply replace du What or were through had been and adjusts the subject accordingly (in this case, was I to she).

Indirect speech is a means of distanced and neutral description of statements by strangers. It is formed in German with the form of the subjunctive I. You will often find indirect speech e.g. B. in newspaper articles when the journalist indirectly quotes another person (e.g. «The President said he was not involved in the scandal.»). Reported speech is therefore rarely used in everyday life, especially in spoken language, but it still fulfills an important function when it is needed.

Past Progressive usage

The past progressive is used in various contexts and is probably one of the most important past tenses in English. It is used in a variety of situations, especially in spoken language. In the following section you will find out exactly when you should use the past progressive.

Past progressive to describe background action

In particular, the past progressive is very commonly used to background actions to describe. This means the longer continuous past progressive background story is interrupted by another short, one-off story. That might sound a bit complex, but fortunately it isn’t. For the background story you just use the past progressive you’ve already learned, and for the short storyline you use that Simple past. You can see exactly how this works using an example and the table below.

longer background story short interrupting storylineI was taking a shower……when the doorbell rank.past progressiveSimple past

With this combination of Past Progressive and Simple Past you can describe the course of actions and events very precisely. Therefore, this form represents a very helpful storytelling technique in English. More examples can be found here:

ace we were walking to the store, we saw our neighbors from across the street.

His phone died when he was riding the bus home from work.

They were cooking dinner on the grill outside when it suddenly started to rain.

In the three examples above, the verbs are in the simple past (saw, died and started) are marked in bold and underlined, while the formations of the past progressive are only marked in bold. In the examples you can also see that the Simple Past can come both before and after the Past Progressive – the order is basically irrelevant, as you can see here:

we saw our neighbors from across the street as we were walking to the store.

Hey was riding the bus home from work when his phone died.

It suddenly started to rain when they were cooking dinner on the grill outside.

Past progressive to describe situations

The past progressive is also often used to indicate a scene or situation to describe. In this way, several independent actions or events can be represented solely with the past progressive. This form is therefore also another storytelling technique, which makes the past progressive possible. This could e.g. B. look like:

It was a gorgeous day at the beach. the sun what shiningchildren were playing and the waves were crashing softly against the shore.

In the example you can see that the three different actions («the sun is shining», «the children are playing» and «the waves are breaking on the shore») independent of each other are. They just describe the scene on the beach. You can find such formulations e.g. B. also often in the literature.

Past progressive signal words

Below you will find some signal words, which can help you use the past progressive correctly. However, you have to be careful with this, because they mainly only appear when the past progressive is used to describe background actions – that is in combination with the Simple Past.

However, as you have already seen, the past progressive is also used in other situations. When describing situations or very simple sentences, e.g. B. There is often no correct signal words. This is especially the case when the time period or duration of the action is not relevant or already implied in the context. For example, if a friend asks you «What were you doing?» it is clear that he wants to know what you have just done and not what you did yesterday or the day before yesterday. In the case of situation descriptions, on the other hand, the time period or the duration of the actions is often simply not relevant.

Therefore, you should rather consider, depending on the situation, whether the course of the actions described allows or even requires the past progressive. It’s best to think of the use cases of the past progressive that you got to know in this article to check this.

Some signal words of the past progressive in combination with the simple past would be e.g. e.g.:

These signal words also appear in many of the examples you already know:

ace we were walking to the store, we saw our neighbors from across the street.

His phone died while he was riding the bus home from work.

They were cooking dinner on the grill outside when it suddenly started to rain.

Past Progressive Feature: Repetitive actions and sequences

In order to use the past progressive correctly, you also need to know in which situations it is used Not is used. While the past progressive can be used in many different situations, one case where it clearly cannot be used is with repetitive actions or processes.

So if you z. For example, if you want to say that you used to ride your bike to school, you just use that Simple past. The sentence could then read like this:

I rode my bike to school every day when I was a kid.

However, if you do the repetitive action as a background story formulate, you can use the past progressive again normally, as you have already learned (with past progressive and Simple past). Using the example above, it could look like this:

At the time when met sally, I was riding my bike to school a lot.

That present participle (the ing form of a verb) can often pose problems for German-speaking learners of English. No wonder, because the form does not exist in German and it is used in many different situations. So don’t worry if such peculiarities and exceptions are difficult for you at the beginning – practice makes perfect!

Past progressive examples

In the table below you will find more examples of the past progressive for each form you have seen in this explanation – positive statements, negative statements, questions and reported speech.

positive statements

negations

Questions

indirect speech

You…