B2Past tenses

Narrative tenses, used to and would

Use past simple, continuous, perfect and perfect continuous alongside used to/would to control narrative sequence, background, duration and repeated past behavior.

Overview

What this grammar does

Use past simple, continuous, perfect and perfect continuous alongside used to/would to control narrative sequence, background, duration and repeated past behavior.

Form and rules

How it works

Past simple normally carries the main sequence of completed narrative events; past continuous creates background or interrupted activity.

Past perfect locates a completed event before the main past reference point; past perfect continuous emphasizes earlier duration or repeated activity.

Used to can describe former states and repeated actions; habitual would normally describes repeated actions, not states.

Once an earlier time frame is established, writers often return to past simple instead of keeping every subsequent verb in past perfect.

Narrative tense choice is partly about viewpoint: the same event may be foregrounded as a whole or backgrounded as an activity in progress.

A closer look

Meaning and use

Once an earlier time frame is established, writers often return to past simple instead of keeping every subsequent verb in past perfect.

Narrative tense choice is partly about viewpoint: the same event may be foregrounded as a whole or backgrounded as an activity in progress.

Examples

See the pattern in complete sentences

I was walking home when the storm began.

The roads were flooded because it had been raining for hours.

By the time we arrived, everyone had left.

We used to live near the sea.

On summer evenings, my grandfather would sit outside and tell stories.

Common mistakes

What to avoid

She was exhausted because she has driven since five that morning.

She was exhausted because she had been driving since five that morning.

The earlier activity continued for a period before the past result, so past perfect continuous fits.

When the alarm rang, I had a shower.

When the alarm rang, I was having a shower.

The shower was an activity in progress when the main event occurred.

Ready to practise?

The test combines multiple choice, gap completion, error correction, and sentence building so students have to recognise and produce the grammar, not simply reread the rule.

Next topic Future forms