In addition to referring to past events, the past tense can also be used in certain contexts to indicate order or duration of past events. Follow the article to find out more about the functions of past tenses.

The past simple tense refers to an action or state that happened or was true at an earlier time. The present simple tense can be used to refer to both specified and unspecified points of time in the past. Look at the examples:

The past continuous tense shows the time span of past actions or events or shows that an action was repeated. For example:

We can use the past simple or past continuous for stories or lists of events. Take a look at some examples:

We use past simple and past continuous to talk about something that was true for some time in the past. Take a look at some examples:

We use the past continuous tense to talk about a process of changing, growing, or developing. This indicates a gradual progression or advancement over an extended period of time. Check out these examples:

We use the 'past perfect tense' to talk about the order of two past events. The past perfect shows the earlier action and the past simple shows the later action. So, if there are two actions following each other, for the action closest to the present use Simple Past, and for the action that came before it use Past Perfect.

We use the 'past perfect tense' to talk about something that started in the past and continued up to another action or time in the past. Just remember, when the sequences of the actions are obvious do not use the 'past perfect tense.' Here are the examples for more clarification.

This usage is specific to state verbs, not actions. We use past perfect with verbs such as 'like,' 'think,' 'love,' 'hate,' 'believe,' etc. to refer to a state that started in the past and continued up to some time in the past. Take a look at some examples:

A few stative verbs such as 'live,' 'enjoy,' 'stay,' 'feel,' 'expect,' and 'have' (in the sense of experiencing) can be used in the past continuous and past perfect continuous tenses to indicate a temporary state. Their difference is that the past continuous tense specifies a precise time when the state was ongoing, while past perfects continuous tense indicates the ongoing state in relation to another point of time. Look at the examples.

We use the 'past perfect continuous' tense to talk about the reason for a situation in the past. In this case, the cause is expressed using the past perfect continuous tense and the result is expressed using the past simple tense. For example:

We use the past continuous tense to talk about an action that was performed repeatedly in the past. We can also use the past perfect continuous to show that an action was repeated up to a point in the past. In both cases, you can use some adverbs of frequency, such as 'always', 'every day' and 'constantly' to emphasize the repetition of actions. For example:

Both past continuous and past perfect continuous tenses can be used to indicate a background action that was in progress when another action interrupted it. In both cases, the action that interrupts the ongoing action is expressed using the past simple tense. The difference between the use of past continuous and past perfect continuous in this case is that past continuous tense emphasizes that the action was in progress while past perfect continuous emphasizes that it was ongoing for some time.

We use the past perfect continuous tense to talk about an action that started in the past and continued up to a given time in the past. In this case, the past perfect continuous tense emphasizes how long the action had been happening before another past event.

We use 'be going to' in the past tense to refer to events that we expected or predicted to happen at some point in the past, but did not. Here are the examples:

We can use 'be going to' in the past tense to talk about what we intended to do in the past, but failed to. Check out the examples!

The present perfect tense is commonly used to talk about an action that happened sometime in the past, but the exact time is not mentioned. Look at the examples:

We use the 'present perfect tense' to talk about an action that started in the past and continues in the present or has some effect that is observable or relevant in the present. In the first case, the action is unfinished, while in the second case it is finished but has tangible results in the present.

We use the present perfect tense to talk about actions that ended recently. In this case, the time when the action happened is not mentioned. We normally use the adverb 'just' with this use to show that it happened in the near past. For example:

Each tense can refer to past events in its own special way. Now let us compare them with each other. Look at the table below: