past progressive
- noun
- /pæst prəˈɡrɛsɪv/
- Specialized
:
pretérito imperfecto
- After dinner, we were watching a movie when the lights went out.
Examples
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When she called, I was reading a book, so I didn't hear the phone.
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They were playing football when it started to rain heavily.
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The past progressive tense is essential for storytelling.
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She was using the past progressive in her essay.
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The teacher explained that the past progressive tense describes actions that were ongoing in the past.
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In her story, she frequently used the past progressive to convey the unfolding events.
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Understanding the past progressive helps students express actions that were happening at a specific time in the past.
Synonyms
Shows an action that was happening at a certain time in the past
To talk about past actions that happened often or were still happening
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and compositionally derived from 'past' (prior time) + 'progressive' (action in progress), so 'past progressive' straightforwardly denotes the progressive/aspectual form located in the past. This construction and labeling are cross-linguistically common in grammar descriptions, making it immediately comprehensible to a B1 learner who knows the constituent words.
Etymology
Past progressive gets its name because 'progressive' shows an action that is still going and 'past' shows it happened before now. It is formed with was or were plus the verb with -ing to show the action was 'ongoing', for example 'was watching' when the lights went out.
