Past Progressive: Interrupted Action

We use the past progressive to describe an action that was already happening at a certain time in the past. We use the past tense of the helping verb be (was / were) and add -ing to the base form of the verb.

For example: I was playing basketball at five o'clock.

Questions about the subject with who or what are always in the singular.

We also use the past progressive for an action that was happening at the moment that a second action happened, or interrupted it. We use the past progressive for the action that was happening and the past simple for the second action that interrupted it.

The past progressive is only used when the action was in the middle of happening. We don't use the past progressive when one thing happened after another.

For example: A thief came in while we were sleeping. He was making a lot of noise so we woke up and scared him. He quickly opened the window and ran away.

The past progressive is often used with time expressions like when, while, and as. When the time clause (the part of the sentence with the time expression) comes at the beginning of the sentence, we use a comma to separate it from the main clause. If the time expression comes in the middle of the sentence, there is no comma.

When the past progressive is used with always, it means that it was a repeated action.

For example: When we were kids, my brother was always playing loud music in the house.

Stative verbs (L1U2L4) don't take the –ing form of the verb. In the past, these verbs take the past simple.

For example: They remembered everything at eight o'clock last night.

Remember!

1. Phrasal Verbs
   Put on and take off are phrasal verbs (L2U1L1). These are verbs that change their meaning when they are followed by different prepositions.
   For example: She put the sweater in the closet.

   She put on the sweater because she was cold.
   They took some books home.
   They took off their hats when they went inside.
2. Compound Words
   Like many other words, the word raincoat is made up of two nouns, rain + coat. Some other examples we learned are: bedroom, homework, fireworks, firefighter, basketball. Words that are made by putting two words together are called compound words.