Simple past and past continuous

Brief explanation for my students of Basic 2 on how to use the Simple Past and the Past Continuous

1. Simple past and past continuous Basic

2. We use the simple past to talk about events in the past and we usually use expressions of time: last week , three months ago , on February , 7th We form the past simple with – ed except for irregular verbs Last week I went to a concert I finished my homework two days ago For questions and negatives we use the auxiliar did Did you go to the concert ? I didn’t start my home work Simple past

3. Past continuous We use the past continuous to describe scenes , what was happening at a given moment , for example While I was having a bath the telephone rang When you arrived I was reading the newspaper We always use the past continuous linked to another sentence with when or while While I was watching TV my brother was playing on the computer We form the past continuous with the past form of the verb to be + verb-ing and don’t need auxiliar for questions and negatives They were playing in the park We weren’t cooking dinner Were you studying when I phoned you ?