the past tense

The Past Simple
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We use the past simple to talk about actions and states which we see as completed in the past.

We can use it to talk about a specific point in time.

She came back last Friday.
I saw her in the street.
They didn't agree to the deal.

It can also be used to talk about a period of time.

She lived in Tokyo for seven years.
They were in London from Monday to Thursday of last week.
When I was living in New York, I went to all the art exhibitions I could.

You will often find the past simple used with time expressions such as these:

Yesterday
three weeks ago
last year
in 2002
from March to June
for a long time
for 6 weeks
in the 1980s
in the last century
in the past


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Past Continuous

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to talk about past events which went on for a period of time.

We use it when we want to emphasize the continuing process of an activity or the period of that activity. (If we just want to talk about the past event as a simple fact, we use the past simple.)


While I was driving home, Peter was trying desperately to contact me.
Were you expecting any visitors?
Sorry, were you sleeping?
I was just making some coffee.
I was thinking about him last night.
In the 1990s few people were using mobile phones.


We often use it to describe a "background action" when something else happened.

I was walking in the street when I suddenly fell over.
She was talking to me on the phone and it suddenly went dead.
They were still waiting for the plane when I spoke to them.
The company was declining rapidly before he took charge.
We were just talking about it before you arrived.
I was making a presentation in front of 500 people when the microphone stopped working.


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Past Perfect
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We use the past perfect simple to talk about what happened before a point in the past. It looks back from a point in the past to further in the past.

I hadn't known the bad news when I spoke to him.
I checked with the supplier and they still hadn't received the contract.
She had already told him before I got a chance to give him my version.
The company has started the year well but was badly hit by the postal strike.


The past perfect simple is often used when we report what people had said/thought/believed.

He told me they had already paid the bill.
He said he believed that John had moved to Italy.
I thought we had already decided on a name for this product.


We use the past perfect continuous to look back at a situation in progress.

It looked like a good time to invest. Inflation had been falling for several months.
Before I changed jobs, I had been working on a plan to reduce production costs.
We had been thinking about doing that but then decided against

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