The past progressive tense baffles just about everyone attempting to learn the English language. The form is as follows: the verb “to be,” whether it’s plural, singular, first, second, or third person will use either one of the following two words: “was” or “were, ” plus the “infinitive” the verb ending in “ing.” Here’s a simple example of the past progressive at work: “I was tossing a Frisbee, or you were tossing a Frisbee.” Or, “They were tossing a Frisbee,” and he or she was tossing a Frisbee.
The past progressive describes the past and the ongoing action that occurred within that past. Typically, most students stumble over the past progressive, not the basic past tense. In regard to past tense, which also expresses action (typically words ending in “ed”), and a state of being in the past, the past tense does not refer to the ongoing actions in the past like the past progressive tense; therefore, novices should learn the simple past tense first, then they can take on the more difficult tenses. Moreover, the past tense explains events that have already been completed, whereas the past progressive tense is used to describe ongoing events in the past that were occurring before a new event came and interrupted the previous one: “We were eating cheese when a mouse scurried out of its hole in the wall.”
In order to make the past progressive easier to understand, the event that is already occurring is in the past progressive tense and the new event, the interrupting entity, falls into the simple past tense. Not every use of the past progressive has to have the interrupter (past tense) after it: “Yesterday, I was dancing to the beat of a very different drum.” Novices should understand the past progressive as a past recurring action: the action of the past. “I was listening to the Barbara Streisand, (ongoing action in the past) when my roommate walked in on me” (interrupting entity). The past progressive is also known as the past continuous. Do not let the two names fool you! They mean the same thing.