1. The Past Tenses

2. The Past Tenses
• There are four tenses that begin with a verb
in the past tense.
• The past simple
• The past continuous
• The past perfect
• The past perfect continuous

3. The Past Tenses
• The past simple and the past continuous are
used with reference to past time. You use
the past simple for events that happened in
the past.
I woke up early and got out of bed.

4. The Past Tenses
• If you are talking about the general past, or
about regular or habitual actions in the past,
you also use the past simple.
She lived just outside London.
We often saw his dog sitting outside his
house.

5. The Past Tenses
• If you are talking about something which
continued to happened before and after a
particular time in the past, you use the past
continuous.
They were sitting in the kitchen, when they
heard the explosion.
Jack arrived while the children were
having their bath.

6. The Past Tenses
• The past continuous is often used to refer to
a temporary situation.
He was working at home at the time.
Bill was using my office until I came back
from America.

7. The Past Tenses
• You often use the past perfect and past
perfect continuous tenses when you are
talking about the past and you are
concerned with something which happened
at an earlier time, or which had started at an
earlier time but was still continuing.
I had heard it was a good film so we
decided to go and see it.

8. The Past Tenses
It was getting late. I had been waiting
there since two o’ clock.

9. The Past Tenses
• You sometime use a past tense rather than a
present tense when you want to be more
polite. In the following pair of sentences the
second sentence is more polite.
Do you want to see me now?
Did you want to see me now?

10. The Past Tenses
• The past tenses have special meanings in
conditional clauses and when referring to
hypothetical and imaginary situations, for
example after ‘I wish’ or ‘What if …?’. You
use the past simple and the past continuous
for something you think is unlikely to
happen.
If they saw the mess, they would be very
angry.

11. The Past Tenses
We would tell you if we were selling the
house.

12. The Past Tenses
• You use the past perfect and the past perfect
continuous when you are talking about
something which could have happened in
the past, but which didn’t actually happen.
If I had known that you were coming, I
would have told Jim.
They wouldn’t have gone to bed if they had
been expecting you to arrive.