PAST CONTINUOUS TENSE

The Past Countinuous Tense

The sentence uses the past countinuous tense. It is used :

1.     To talk about an action which was in progress at a certain time in the past.

Subject	Past Countinuous (was / were + V-ing +……)	Adverb of Time
-          Ira -          The students	Was a writing a magazine Were having a biology class	At about  8 p.m last night at about 11 a.m. yesterday

2.    To talk about two actions that occurred at the same time. One action began earlier and was in progress when the other action occurred.

Example :

The children were having lunch when their mother came home.

Meaning:

The children had lunch, then their mother came home. After that, the children probably still had lunch.

While/When	Subject 1	Past Continuous	Subject 2	Simple Past
While	I	Was sleeping	The phone	Rang
When	Mr. Jono	Was having a meeting	A blast sound	Was heard

Subject 1	Past Continnuous	When	Subject 2	Simple Past
We	Were listening to the  CD	When	Someone	Knocked on the door
The teacher	Was explaining the lesson	When	The blackout	Happened

We can use when/while with the past continuous tense, but we can only use when before the simple past Tense.

3.    To talk about two long actions that were in progress simultaneously.

Example :

While I was studying, my mother was cooking.

Meaning :

Studying needs much time, cooking also needs much time. They are considered as in the same length of time.

While	Subject 1	Past Continuous	Subject 2	Past Continuous
While	Mrs.  Joe	Was cleaning the garden	Mr. Joe	Was plowing his field
While	The Children	Where practicing singing	The teeneegers	Were preparing for a drama