Past continuous

When you use it

Use the past continuous for an action that was in progress at a particular moment in the past. Very often another, shorter action interrupts it, and that shorter action is in the past simple. The past continuous also sets the scene in a story, describing what was happening around the main events, and it describes two long actions running at the same time. Think of it as the background: the picture that was already there when something happened.

How it is formed

The past continuous is the past form of be plus the -ing form of the main verb. Be is the only part that changes with the subject.

Short forms: wasn't, weren't. Short answers repeat was / were: Were you sleeping? No, I wasn't. The -ing spelling is the same as in the present continuous: making, sitting, lying.

The words that join the two actions are when and while.

When usually introduces the short action; while introduces the long one. Both orders are possible; a comma separates the clauses when the joining word comes first.

Typical time expressions: at seven o'clock, at that moment, all morning, yesterday evening, this time last week.

Examples

• I was watching a film when the phone rang.
• Anna was walking to work at eight o'clock this morning.
• Were you waiting long? Sorry, the bus was late.
• It was raining, so we stayed inside all afternoon.
• Tom was talking on the phone while I was cooking.
• They were not listening, so I said it again.
• What were you doing at ten last night?
• I was not thinking about the exam; I was thinking about lunch.

In the first example the film was the background and the phone was the event. In the fifth, two long actions ran side by side. The others describe a single scene at a given time.

Common mistakes

• ✗ I watched TV when the phone rang. (meaning: in the middle of watching)
  ✓ I was watching TV when the phone rang.
  Ukrainian and Russian use the imperfective past, «я дивився / я смотрел», both for the background and for a finished action, and the listener works it out from context. English marks the background explicitly with was / were + -ing; the past simple here would suggest that you switched the TV on after the phone rang.
• ✗ When I was opening the door, I was seeing a letter on the floor.
  ✓ When I opened the door, I saw a letter on the floor.
  Two short, complete actions in sequence are both past simple. The past continuous is for the long action, not for everything that happened in the past. See is also a state verb, and state verbs rarely take the continuous.
• ✗ They was playing football.
  ✓ They were playing football.
  Was goes with I, he, she, it; were goes with you, we, they. Slavic past tense marks gender and number on the verb itself («вона грала, вони грали»), so a separate agreeing auxiliary is a new habit to build.
• ✗ Yesterday I was eating dinner, then I was washing the dishes, then I was going to bed.
  ✓ Yesterday I ate dinner. Then I washed the dishes and went to bed.
  The continuous is not a general tense for "yesterday". A sequence of completed events is told in the past simple; only an action in progress at a named moment takes the continuous.
• ✗ What you were doing yesterday?
  ✓ What were you doing yesterday?
  In Russian «Что ты делал вчера?» keeps the order of a statement, so the inversion is easy to forget. In an English question was / were moves in front of the subject.

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