Name: Past continuous and past perfect continuous - Learners' Questions
Uploaded: 2020-03-23T05:32:53.000Z
Duration: 4 min 17 s
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What's the difference between the past continuous tents on the past?

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Okay, so both these tenses take place in the past.

Both are useful for narrative tenses, and both are continuous, so watch out for those state verbs.

However, this is a very brief overview, and for more detailed information on each tense, individually go to our website BBC Learning english dot com.

The past continuous is formed with was or were plus verb i n g.

We use it alone to talk about a past action which was in progress at a past time.

For example, what were you doing at eight last night at eight?

It's often used in combination with the past, simple in something that I like to call the interrupted past.

This is when two actions happen together.

Ah, longer action, which is usually the past continuous on a shorter action, which is usually the past simple.

Most commonly, the shorter action interrupts the longer action.

For example, I was sleeping peacefully when suddenly the phone rang.

We use words like when and while, for example, while I was showering, the phone rang.

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Continuous is formed with had plus Bean plus verb i n g.

It talks about an action that happened before.

However, it's also continuous, so that action was in progress.

For example, I had been cooking suit for 20 minutes when the phone Hello.

Sometimes we use the past perfect continuous to say that the result of one action relates to another like consequences.

For example, I had been working all day, so I was very tired.

The sun was shining when I went out, but the ground was wet because it had bean raining.

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