What were you doing?

What were you doing?

by Ana Espinosa

​Describing order of events.

​The simple past and the past progressive, also past continuous, are used to express actions in the past.

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• ​​We use the simple past as the narrative form of the past to express completed, sequential actions.

  We use the past progressive to say what was happening at a particular moment in the past, to set the scene and to emphasise duration of a past action.

Multiple Choice

We use _________ to describe a completed action.

• simple past

• past progressive

Multiple Choice

We use the _________ to describe a continuing action in the past.

• simple past

• past progressive

Multiple Choice

When we tell a story, we use the _____ for the action that started first.

• simple past

• past progressive

Multiple Choice

We use the _______ for the event that happened second. 

• simple past

• past progressive