Past Tense

Simple past

Forms

With most verbs the past tense is formed by adding -ed:

call >> called; like >> liked; want >> wanted; work >> worked

But there are a lot of irregular past tenses in English. Here are the most common irregular verbs in English, with their past tenses:

The past continuous is formed from the past tense of be with the -ing form of the verb:

We use the past continuous to talk about the past:

Past continuous

For something which continued before and after another action:

The children were doing their homework when I got home.

Compare:

I got home. The children did their homework.
and
The children did their homework when I got home.

As I was watching television the telephone rang.

This use of the past continuous is very common at the beginning of a story:

The other day I was waiting for a bus when …
Last week as I was driving to work …

Past perfect

We use the verb had and the past participle for the past perfect:

I had finished the work.
She had gone .

The past perfect continuous is formed with had been and the -ing form of the verb:

I had been finishing the work
She had been going.

Function

The past perfect is used in the same way as the present perfect, but it refers to a time in the past, not the present.

We use the past perfect tense:

Examples:

·         for something that started in the past and continued up to a given time in the past:

When George died he and Anne had been married for nearly fifty years.
She didn’t want to move. She had lived in Liverpool all her life.

We normally use the past perfect continuous for this:

She didn’t want to move. She had been living in Liverpool all her life.
Everything was wet. It had been raining for hours.

·         for something we had done several times up to a point in the past and continued to do after that point:

He was a wonderful guitarist. He had been playing ever since he was a teenager.
He had written three books and he was working on another one.
I had been watching the programme every week, but I missed the last episode.