In this tense article we are going to discuss about past progressive which is also referred to as past continuous and learn the concepts with the help of examples.
We all know that Tenses work as the heart of English grammar, without which there is no soul in it. It’s not very difficult to form a meaningful sentence. One just have to know the rules, person’s role and the tense. The time of action will not always be the same. So according to the time, the tense changes.
Characteristics of Past Progressive Sentences
The Past Continuous or past progressive tense is used for continuous event that happened in the past, and also for the continuous actions of the past.
The sentence structure formula for Past Progressive Tenses is (Subject + was / were + ‘ing’ form of the verb + object).
Let us understand this formula with the help of an example “I was cooking”. Here ‘I’ is the subject, ‘was’ is used to represent action of past, ‘cook’ + ‘ing’ to form ‘cooking’ to show a continuous action.
10 Examples of Past Progressive Sentences
- I was writing
- We were writing
- You were writing
- He was writing
- She was writing
- It was writing
- They were writing
- The kid was playing every day that summer.
- I was doing meditation when he came.
- She was crying continuously in class in those days.
- What were doing when cooker whistle went off yesterday?
- What was he doing during the examination?
Notice how we are using ‘was’ and ‘were’ to show that we are talking about the past and ‘ing’ form of verb to represent a continuous action.
Active Voice Form of Past Progressive Sentences
The Sentence Structure formula for past continuous or past progressive sentences when they are is active voice form is (Subject + was / were + ‘ing’ form of the verb + object).
Let us look at examples to see how above formula works
- I was teaching English
- She was writing novels
- He was reading a story
Passive Voice Form of Past Progressive Sentences
The Sentence Structure formula for past continuous or past progressive sentences when they are is passive voice form is (Object as subject + was being / were being + past participle tense of the verb + by + subject as object)
why not look at some examples to see how this big formula works
- English was being taught by me.
- Novels were being written by me.
- A story was being read by him
You can use this article as an extensive guide to past progressive tenses which will help you in building a sentence perfectly. In this website, there’s an individual section for every type of tense exclusively. So go through each of it to have a wider picture.