Verbs – Past Tense

A 2 min read

The verbs that denote that the actions took place in the past are said to be the verbs written in past tense. For example:

1. John went to school yesterday.
2. Gina prayed before she slept.

Past Tense can be further divided into four sub-categories:

Simple Past Tense

This tense is used to present general information about the actions that started in the past and finished in the past as well. We also use this tense to talk about past habits. For example:

1. Many freedom fighters gave their lives, fighting for the independence of their country.
2. Mary practiced for 12 hours every day before her first performance.

Past Progressive/Continuous Tense

This tense is used to show an action that was happening in the past. The time of the action may be or may not be indicated.

Like the present continuous tense, the past tense is also derived by adding “ing” to the base verb. A point to remember here is that only the verb-ing word does not make the continuous tense. The verb-ing word must be preceded by a past tense helping verb to make the verb in present continuous. Let’s take examples here:

1. Roy was playing football with his younger brother.
2. The managers were looking for people for a numbers of vacant posts in the company.
3. The power went off when I was reading.

The verbs in all the above three sentences are “was playing”, “were looking”, and “was reading”. Notice that if we used only “playing”, “looking”, or “reading” in these sentences, they would not qualify as verbs in the absence of the helping verbs “was”, “were”, and “was” respectively. These helping verbs actually show the tense of the action. Hence, in present continuous tense, the verb-ing word MUST BE PRECEDED by is/are/am.

Past Perfect Tense

This tense describes action that was completed before a certain moment in the past:

1. I had met Julia some 20 years ago.
2. My great grandfather had given this watch to my grandfather.

The past perfect tense verbs are always written with “had”.  However, this word in itself is not a past perfect verb. To be so, “had” must be followed by the verb in its participle form. The verbs in the above mentioned examples follow this structure. So “had” together with the participle form of verb makes the past perfect tense.

If “had” is used just by itself and is not followed by a verb in its participle form, then it works as simple past tense verb.

1. I had your book but not anymore. (Simple Past Tense)
2. The team had great respect for its former coach. (Simple Past Tense)

Past Perfect Continuous Tense

This tense is used to present an action that started sometime before a certain point the past and continued up to that time. This tense is a mix of past continuous and past perfect tense and hence uses the following structure:

1. When Prof Roy joined the institute, Prof Sen had already been teaching there for six years.
2. At that time, he had already been working on his fifth book for three months.

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