Progressive Past

Simple past, past progressive, past perfect

by Geovanna Navarrete Romero

​When people talk they don't stay just within one tense.

​They use all other tenses.

​

​When people speak in the past they not only speak in simple past.

​They use a combination of tenses:

​Like the simple past, the past continuous and the past perfect (among others)

​Let's look at examples of people speaking in the past:

​

Poll

What past tenses did you read and hear?

• Simple past

• Past continuous

• Past perfect

• Present perfect

​Let's talk about simple past:

things that happened or existed before now.​

​There are two kinds of verbs:

Regular and Irregular

​

For Regular verbs you add -(e)d at the end

​

​Irregular verbs can either:

• ​Change completely.

• ​Change only in one letter.

• ​Stay the same

• ​Stay the same but with different pronunciation.

Multiple Select

Which of these verbs are regular?

• Chew

• Eat

• Play

• Brush

• Stop

Multiple Select

Which of these verbs are irregular?

• be

• Let

• Get

• know

• Say

​To make a positive sentence in the simple past:

​Subject + verb conjugated in past.

​" She knew I wasn't coming"

​

​To make a negative sentence in the simple past:

​Subject + did+ not+ verb in base form

​"She did not (didn't) know I wasn't coming"

​

​To make a question in the simple past:

​Did + subject + verb in base form.

"Did she know I was coming?"

Fill in the Blanks

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​Let's talk about the past continuous:

​Be careful to use to correct auxiliary

​I

​You Was

​We

​They

​He

​She Were

​It

Multiple Choice

On monday, they ______ ________ to rock music .

• were listening

• were listen

• was listened

Multiple Choice

My parents ____ when I came home.

• was work

• were work

• was working

• were working

Fill in the Blanks

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​Now we're only missing the past perfect.

​We can use the past perfect to show the order of two past events. The past perfect shows the earlier action and the past simple shows the later action

In this tense​ we use the past participle

​

Multiple Choice

Write the past participle of the verb:

FORGET

• FORGETTING

• FORGOTTEN

• FORGETTED

Multiple Choice

Write the past pasticiple of the verb:

EAT

• EATIED

• EATEN

• ATE

Multiple Choice

Write the past participle of the verb:

BRING

• BRANG

• BROUGHT

• BRINGED

​To create a sentence in the past perfect

Fill in the Blanks

Multiple Choice

Steve told us, Mary ________ (not buy) that car the month before.

• hadn’t bought

• bought

• haven’t bought

• hasn’t bought

Fill in the Blanks

Poll

Survey:

Do you have problems with any of these? (Choose as many as you want)

• Simple past

• Past progressive

• Past perfect

• Verbs in past participle