

When he came into the room, everyone was sleeping.īut again, this depends on how much the person speaking and the person listening know. While I was eating my dinner, I saw the most beautiful sunset.

The past continuous is an important tense to help create atmosphere in our story. She was taking the bus that week instead of the train. *Raining cats and dogs = raining very hard We use the past continuous to talk about: (I don’t!) So here’s how it looks when you make it all technical: The Past Simple +įRED: Something really weird happened to me last night.įRED: I met a really angry giraffe last night. The past simple is the most important tense for telling our story - it describes the main events in our story. Picasso lived in that house for most of his life. I met a very friendly giraffe on my last visit here. We use the past simple if we want to express a single action that happened in the past: If we go outside this story time frame, it’s important that we show it so that our story is clear and we understand what happened first and what happened second and, most importantly, what happened outside the story time frame.

In English, it’s very important to be clear about the time of the story. Nothing is completely certain (most of the time).īut when we talk about the past, we’re actually telling a story. When we talk about the future, we’re making plans and predictions.
