Past Tense or Past Continuous Tense

Past Tense or Past Continuous Tense    

        The past tense (abbreviated PST) is a grammatical tense that places an action or situation in the past of the current moment (in an absolute tense system), or prior to some specified time that may be in the speaker's past, present, or future (in a relative tense system). Not all languages mark verbs for the past tense (Mandarin Chinese, for example, does not); in some languages, the grammatical expression of past tense is combined with the expression of mood and/or aspect (see tense–aspect–mood). Some languages that mark for past tense do so by inflecting the verb, while others do so by using auxiliary verbs (and some do both).

Example of past tense :

1)      I went to work yesterday.

2)      I read a book yesterday.

         

         The past continuous Verbs have different forms, called tenses. The tense of a verb tells us when the action happens.

Example of past continuous tense :

1)      I was eating my breakfast when the phone rang.

2)      I was sleeping when the phone rang.