To understand Tenses in English, the best way is to know how they are actually used in daily communication. This means that, once you learn the usage and structure of a particular tense you need to look at various forms of examples of that tense. In this article, lets look at various forms of Past Continuous Tense Example Sentences.
Structure: Subject + Was/ Were + Verb 1 (V1) + ing + Object
I was watching Soccer on TV last night.Past continuous tense was expressed in sentences containing an action that was happening at some time in the past.
- He was working as a teacher during this time last year.
- I was visiting London in May last year.
Some more rules:
- This tense is used when two actions were simultaneously happening in the past. For example, “While he was doing the dishes, I was preparing lunch”. Here, both the deeds were happening in the past at the same time.
- This tense can also be used along with simple past tense. For example, “While I was going to the theater, I saw him on the road.”
Past Continuous tense Example Sentences
Like every tense, the past continuous tense too can be expressed in the following forms
Positive : Subject + was/were + V1 + ing + Object
Positive Interrogative : Was/were + subject + V1 + ing + Object?
Negative : Subject + was/were not + V1 + ing + Object
Negative Interrogative : Was/were not + subject + V1 + ing + Object?
Let us take an example and write it in the above four forms.
- Positive : They were watching a film.
- Positive Interrogative : Were they watching a film?
- Negative : They were not watching a film.
- Negative Interrogative : Were they not watching a film?
Exercise: Let’s take some more Past Continuous tense Example Sentences and try to write the four forms of all those.
- I was being loud in the classroom.
- She wasn’t going to write that poem.
- He was waiting for you in the hall before he left.
- It was getting darker.
For remaining Tenses, Click here