Hello, welcome to this language focus video, Unit One on the Past Tense.
We've been talking about the history of journalism.
Which means, we've been using different forms of the past tense.
You watched several videos, completed a survey and played a game.
While you were watching the videos, were you taking notes?
Take a look at those sentences.
There are two forms of the past tense being used there, the simple past, and
the past progressive, sometimes called the past continuous.
In this video, we're going to talk about the structure and
meaning of the simple past and the past progressive.
We'll also talk about when we should use each of these forms.
Let's start with the simple past.
When an action begins and ends in the past, then we use the simple past.
For example, before this video, you watched several videos,
completed a survey and played a game.
All of these actions started and ended before now.
That's why we put them in the simple past.
Most verbs can be put in the past simply by adding ed or
just d to the end of the verb.
For example, played, watched, completed.
You may notice that there are many verbs that do not take an ed ending.
For example,
the technology was not available to print the news before the Gutenberg press.
In this sentence, the verb to be is put in the past.
This is an irregular verb.
Here's another example.
In China, people read the messages from the government called the Dibao.
Here, the verb to read is in the past.
There are as many as 400 irregular verbs.
It's worth memorizing these forms, because many of these verbs are quite common.
For example, write, wrote.
Is, was.
Think, thought.
Take, took.
Or speak, spoke.
There's a link in the bonus materials that will help you study the most common
irregular past-tense verbs.
Now let's move on to talk about the structure of the past progressive.
Similar to the present progressive, the past progressive
is formed with either was or were and the ing form of the verb.
For example, while I was watching the video about the history of journalism,
I was taking notes.
This means that there was a duration,
a period of time when you were watching and taking notes.
Similar to the simple past, this is an event that began and ended in the past.
But with the past progressive, the audience, the listener or
reader, knows that it happened for a longer time, not just a moment.
Many times, the past progressive and the simple past are used together.
For example, I was researching the story when my editor called.
Here, you can tell that the speaker was researching perhaps for
many minutes or hours.
The editor called during that time.
We don't know exactly when the editor called, but
we know what the speaker was doing at the time.
Here's another example.
While many countries were looking for alternatives to gas powered cars,
Tesla introduced the electric automobile.
Notice that while is often used to introduce the past progressive.
And when is often used with the simple past.
And remember, when you choose between past simple and
past progressive, think about which action takes the longest.
That action will be in the past progressive form.
To summarize, we've talked about the simple past and the past progressive.
We've talked about how actions that start and end in the past use both forms.
Use the past progressive to show what was happening when something else happened.
Use the simple past if you are just talking about one event that began and
ended in the past.
Also, remember to study those irregular forms.
Lastly, we talked about how to use both forms together while using either while or
when.
Check your understanding of this concept with the next game.
Also, check the bonus materials for a game using irregular past tense verbs.