Past Continuous Tense Examples

Past continuous tense is one of the four types of past tense. This article will give you a list of past continuous tense examples to help you out. Let’s have a look at them.

Table of Contents

• What Is Past Continuous Tense?
• Examples of Past Continuous Tense
• How Can Past Continuous Tense Be Formed?
• FAQs on Past Continuous Tense Examples

What Is Past Continuous Tense?

Past continuous tense refers to/denotes those actions/events that were happening for a particular time in the past. For example, “Sam was writing a letter to his friend.” Here, ‘was writing’ refers to an action that Sam was doing in the past.

Examples of Past Continuous Tense

The following examples will help students understand better all about past continuous tense.

List of Past Continuous Tense Examples

• It was snowing yesterday.
• They were eating at the restaurant.
• You were working yesterday.
• I was studying last night.
• I was waiting for the cab when I met Raj.
• The children were shouting when the teacher came in.
• It was midnight when it was raining.
• Everyone was clapping.
• Raj was practising the guitar after classes.
• The baby was laughing when I came into the room.
• The children were playing in the garden.
• The girls were dancing as the music played.
• The child was eating an apple.
• Trina was going to the library.
• The dog was barking at night.
• The students were not studying for the test.
• They were going to play football.
• My mother was baking a cake for me.
• The birds were chirping in the sky.
• The kite was flying in the sky.

How Can Past Continuous Tense Be Formed?

Knowing how a particular tense is formed will help you learn and identify tenses easily, so take a look at the structure of a sentence in the past continuous tense.

Subject + Be form (was/were) + ‘ing’ form of verb + object/adjunct

For example, “My brother was cooking dinner yesterday.” Here, the subject is ‘my brother’, which is used with the ‘be’ form, i.e. ‘was’, and with the ‘ing’ form of the verb, i.e. cooking.