Spoken English Grammar - Past simple or past continuous (with practice exercises and answers)

English grammar – Past simple or past continuous?

Teacher Mark shows you when to use the past simple and when to use the past continuous. (English grammar lesson with a British accent)

Past simple = Subject + past verb
For example: I studied English grammar.

Past continuous = Subject + be + (verb)ing
For example: "I was studying English grammar."

Use past simple when you are talking about a finished action which started and finished in a finished time.

For example: "Yesterday, I studied English grammar."

Use past continuous if the action started and finished outside of a finished time.

For example:

"I started studying English grammar at 10am and finished at 4pm."
This person could say "At 2pm, I was studying English grammar."
The action (study English grammar) started and finished outside of the finished time (2pm).

If you have two verbs in a sentence, you can use past continuous + past simple to show that the actions happened at the same time.

For example:

"I drank a coffee while I was studying English grammar."
This means that the person was studying English grammar, and they drank a coffee at the same time.

When you’re telling stories or talking about your past/memories, it’s very useful to be able to use the past simple and past continuous correctly.

This video will show you when to use each one, and show you some simple rules to remember so that you can talk clearly about things that happened in your past.

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