Remember, when we want to talk about something that is happening right now, we use the present continuous tense. What about when we want to talk about something that was happening in the past? We call this the past continuous tense.

The past continuous tells us about an action that was happening in the past. It is an action that was continuing and was not yet finished, but it is not happening now in the present anymore. For example, “It was raining yesterday, but today it is snowing.”

There is good news! If you know how to form the present continuous, then you will know how to form the past continuous. All you have to do is use a past tense conjugation of “to be” before the main verb of the sentence, and add ing to the end of the main verb as usual.

  • [pronoun] + [to be-past] + [verb] -ing

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Exercises

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