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  • What's the difference between the past continuous tents on the past?

  • Perfect.

  • Continuous tense.

  • That's what Anne wants to know, and that's what we're doing on this.

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  • Okay, so both these tenses take place in the past.

  • Both are useful for narrative tenses, and both are continuous, so watch out for those state verbs.

  • However, this is a very brief overview, and for more detailed information on each tense, individually go to our website BBC Learning english dot com.

  • The past continuous is formed with was or were plus verb i n g.

  • We use it alone to talk about a past action which was in progress at a past time.

  • For example, what were you doing at eight last night at eight?

  • I was watching TV.

  • It's often used in combination with the past, simple in something that I like to call the interrupted past.

  • This is when two actions happen together.

  • Ah, longer action, which is usually the past continuous on a shorter action, which is usually the past simple.

  • Most commonly, the shorter action interrupts the longer action.

  • For example, I was sleeping peacefully when suddenly the phone rang.

  • Hello to join these two tenses.

  • We use words like when and while, for example, while I was showering, the phone rang.

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  • Perfect.

  • Continuous is formed with had plus Bean plus verb i n g.

  • Like the past Perfect.

  • It talks about an action that happened before.

  • Another action in the past.

  • However, it's also continuous, so that action was in progress.

  • For example, I had been cooking suit for 20 minutes when the phone Hello.

  • Sometimes we use the past perfect continuous to say that the result of one action relates to another like consequences.

  • For example, I had been working all day, so I was very tired.

  • And then the phone rang.

  • Yet finally compare the two tenses.

  • The sun was shining when I went out, but the ground was wet because it had bean raining.

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What's the difference between the past continuous tents on the past?

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