Simple Past vs Past Progressive vs Past Perfect

Lesson Transcript

Hi, everybody. My name is Alisha.

In this lesson, we're going to look at the differences between simple past tense, past progressive or continuous tense, and past perfect tense.

Let's get started.

First, let's take a look at simple past tense, the most basic past tense.

When do we use simple past tense? We use simple past tense to talk about actions that started and ended in the past.

So the beginning and the end of the action are in the past.

On this timeline here, which shows us the past at this side, the present at the star and the future in this direction, we have two points.

This blue point is the check mark, this is the start point of the action.

And here, this x is the end point of the action.

Both points are in the past for this action.

So we can express this with a simple past tense statement.

For example, I ate breakfast, very basic simple past tense statement, right? Here is our past tense verb.

I ate breakfast.

So this action started and ended in the past, right? Very basic.

Let's look at the second example sentence.

My roommate worked out this morning.

Here I have the verb workout, but in past tense worked out.

Again, the action, the workout started and ended before the present.

So we use simple past tense to express that.

The final example sentence, we studied after dinner, we studied after dinner.

Study is the verb here.

This shows us because it's in simple past tense, the action started and ended before the present moment.

So all of these are very, very basic simple past tense sentences.

In part two and in part three of this lesson, we are going to build on these sentences to see different ways that we can express ideas in similar manners with different grammar points.

So let's keep this in mind and go to part two.

In part two, we're going to look at past progressive or past continuous tense.

When do we use this tense? We use past progressive for actions that were continuing in the past.

So this means an action started in the past, and it didn't just start and finish.

But we want to talk about an action that was continuing in the past.

We want to emphasize this continuing part of the action for some reason.

So let's look at some examples that have kind of a similar feel to our first three example sentences.

Let's take a look at the first example sentence here.

So our first example here is at 9am I was eating breakfast at 9am I was eating breakfast.

So here we see was which shows us this is a past action and eating which shows this was a continuing action.

So this shows at this point in time at 9am this action was continuing the action of eating was continuing.

This sentence doesn't say exactly when the action started.

We just want to express the action was continuing at this time.

Okay, so let's move on to our second example sentence now.

My roommate was working out this morning.

So here we have was working out.

In this sentence again, we have that past progressive structure which shows us at this moment in time this morning, this continuing action was happening.

Again, when the action started is not so important.

With this progressive form, we are talking about when the action was continuing.

That's the important bit of information here.

So in this case, this morning was the point in time or the time period in which my roommate was working out.

We want to talk about this in a continuing manner.

Okay, the last example then, after dinner, we were studying.

After dinner, we were studying.

In this sentence, we have were studying.

So this is our continuing action.

So in this case, we have after dinner.

So something happened in the past, maybe we had dinner here, and then studying started.

And we just want to talk about what we were doing in the time period after dinner.

So after dinner, we were studying, we want to emphasize that this was a continuing action we did after dinner.

So maybe you can see that in some cases, like in this one, the expression is very similar, right? The meaning is very similar.

We've studied after dinner, simple past tense sentence, start and end, right? In this sentence, after dinner, we were studying or we were studying after dinner is also okay.

This expresses the same idea, right? But the difference is, this sentence expresses that continuing nature.

So you might hear this kind of sentence used in response to a question like, after dinner, what were you doing? I didn't see you.

You might say, Oh, after dinner, we were studying, like you might be asked something about where you were or what you were doing or something like that someone was looking for you, you might use this to respond.

So this is kind of how we would use progressive or the continuous form, as opposed to or instead of just the simple past form if you want to make it clear what you were doing at a specific time.

Okay, so with these two grammar points in mind, let's continue to part three.

Now, we're going to look at past perfect tense now.

So when do we use past perfect, we use past perfect for an action that happened before another past action.

So of these three grammar points, past perfect is the least often used, but it is very important, because it helps express a sequence of past actions.

When we need to know which action came first and which action came second, we do this with past perfect tense.

So on our timeline, what does this look like? On our timeline, from past to future, we have, in a very basic sense, two actions, our first action, action number one, and our second action, action number two.

Generally, when we do this, when we want to talk about two actions, two past actions together, the earlier action, action one is expressed with past perfect.

The more recent action is expressed with simple past tense, which we talked about here.

So we do this to show a sequence of actions.

Okay, so you will notice, however, when you listen to native speakers in just everyday communication and in everyday texts, for example, a lot of native speakers don't care so much about past perfect tense.

Oftentimes, we just use simple past tense, because we can understand from context, what happened first, what happened second, and so on.

But occasionally, you will run into situations where it's very important to show, in writing especially, which happened first, and which happened second.

We do it with this grammar point.

So let's look at some examples.

The first one here.

When I finished breakfast, I realized I had eaten five pancakes.

So this sentence uses two past tense grammar points.

First, we have when I finished, I realized, okay.

So these two are simple past tense.

Yeah.

So when I finished, I realized these two things are happening at the same time.

These are our simple past grammar points.

They are happening earlier.

I'm sorry, they're happening later.

They are closer to the present.

Okay.

Then we have I had eaten five pancakes.

This is past perfect tense.

I had eaten.

This shows this happened before the past tense action.

So finished and realized happened at the same moment.

I finished my breakfast.

And I realized in that moment, I had eaten five pancakes.

So we use these two grammar points to show the progression of time to show how time is passing.

Okay, let's look at another example of this.

By the time I woke up, my roommate had been working out for half an hour.

So again, we have a simple past tense grammar structure here.

So by the time I woke up, so maybe I woke up at eight o'clock or nine o'clock, let's say so by that point in time.

So this is again, my simple past tense action.

So it is here action two.

This happened more recently.

By the time I woke up, my roommate had been working out for half an hour.

You'll notice this uses had been working out this uses past perfect progressive.

So this grammar point, just like simple past perfect form, uses the progressive form to show that an earlier past action was a continuing past action.

So this sentence expresses my roommate started working out. Yeah, in the past back here.

And then somewhere maybe around here. I woke up.

Yeah. And by that time, my roommate had been working out this time period was 30 minutes, this time period was half an hour.

So that's what this sentence expresses.

By the time I woke up, my roommate had been working out for half an hour.

So we can express this time relationship between two actions in the past in this way.

And we can express a continuing past action in this way.

Okay, let's go to our last one.

So the last one is, after we had eaten dinner, we studied for an hour.

After we had eaten dinner, we studied for an hour.

So this uses, again, just the simple, the basic form of past perfect, no progressive.

So let's break this down.

After we had eaten dinner, here's our past perfect.

This shows us this is the earlier action. Yeah. After we had eaten dinner, simple past, we studied for an hour, right? We studied for an hour.

So dinner was first, studying was second. Yeah. This is a very straightforward, easy to see the sequence of, right? This is very easy to understand.

After we had eaten dinner, we studied for an hour.

So as I said before, in a lot of situations, native speakers, especially in speech, just tend to use lots of simple past.

And in context, in, you know, in conversations, when we can check very easily, when did that happen or ask questions, it's typically very easy to use simple past, but especially when you're writing, knowing how to use past perfect and knowing what it means when you read it is very, very important to do.

Sometimes it's very important to show the sequence of things.

So I hope that this lesson helped you understand the differences between simple past tense, past progressive or continuous and past perfect as well as past perfect continuous.

If you want some more information about these grammar points, I have some videos about them on the English Class 101 YouTube channel and website.

So please have a look at those for more information about how to make this grammar and some other situations in which you might want to use it.

So I hope that this lesson was helpful for you in refreshing your knowledge about these grammar points.

Of course, if you have any questions or comments, or if you want to practice making some example sentences with this information, please feel free to do so in the comment section of this video.

Thanks very much for watching this video and I will see you again soon. Bye.

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