{"id":2001,"date":"2017-03-19T16:16:34","date_gmt":"2017-03-19T16:16:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/?p=2001"},"modified":"2017-03-19T16:16:34","modified_gmt":"2017-03-19T16:16:34","slug":"past-continuous-tense-overview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/past-continuous-tense-overview\/","title":{"rendered":"Past continuous tense overview"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The past continuous tense<\/strong> is used to talk about actions or events that were going on around a particular point of time in the past.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What <strong>were you doing<\/strong> at 4 o\u2019clock yesterday afternoon? I was playing with my daughter.<\/li>\n<li>What <strong>were you doing<\/strong> at 8 o\u2019clock in the morning? I was getting ready for school.<\/li>\n<li>What<strong> were you doing<\/strong> in my room? I was searching for the car keys.<\/li>\n<li>What<strong> was he doing<\/strong> in the garden? He was plucking some flowers.<\/li>\n<li>What <strong>was Rani doing<\/strong> in the morning? Rani was doing her homework.<\/li>\n<li>What<strong> was Sam doing<\/strong> yesterday evening? Sam was watching a cricket match on TV.<\/li>\n<li>What <strong>was Meenakshi doing<\/strong> yesterday? Meenakshi was planting some saplings in the garden.<\/li>\n<li>What<strong> was Dad doing<\/strong> in the garage? Dad was fixing his bike.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.perfectyourenglish.com\/grammar\/tense-rules.htm\">past continuous <\/a>and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/simple-past-tense-overview\/\">simple past tenses<\/a> are commonly used together. In this case, the simple past tense is used to refer to the shorter \u00a0action that happens in the middle of a longer background action.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I<strong> was having<\/strong> (past continuous) a bath when the telephone <strong>rang<\/strong> (simple past).<\/li>\n<li>We <strong>were having<\/strong> lunch when someone<strong> knocked<\/strong> on the door.<\/li>\n<li>I <strong>was reading<\/strong> when the lights <strong>went<\/strong> out.<\/li>\n<li>She<strong> was cooking<\/strong> dinner when guests arrived.<\/li>\n<li>I <strong>was watching<\/strong> TV when Rahul called.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The past continuous tense is used to talk about actions or events that were going on around a particular point of time in the past. What were you doing at 4 o\u2019clock yesterday afternoon?&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[251],"tags":[420],"class_list":["post-2001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grammar","tag-past-continuous-tense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2001"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2002,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2001\/revisions\/2002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/perfectyourenglish.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}