How to Use the Past Continuous Tense
What were you doing when you saw your friend at a bus stop?
This question requires the speaker to respond to two verbs: "doing" and "saw". The "doing" action took longer than the "saw" action. Extending the timeframe of the verb doing ("what were you doing") allows the speaker to request information about other parallel events.
| I was walking to work when I saw my friend at a bus stop |
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Again, extending the timeframe of walking (I was walking to work) allows the speaker to insert information about parallel events. The two actions of walking to work and seeing a friend at the bus stop happened in the same timeframe; however, walking to work (Action 1) took longer, whereas seeing a friend (Action 2) was quicker.
Note that when you insert a second action into the timeframe of an extended action, you use the Past Continuous for the extended action and the Past Simple for the inserted action.
Past Continuous in Present Time
| I was just thinking about you |
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In the case of parallel actions, the Past Continuous tense can bring you right up to a point very close to the present moment (Now). An extended action that started in the past might have finished only one second ago. It is still a completed action that started and finished in the past. Something that is interrupted at the moment of speaking becomes a Past event. It is possible that while you were walking to work, you were thinking about your friend. When you suddenly see him at the bus stop, you stop thinking about him in order to speak to him. You would say "I was just thinking about you!"
Once again, the Reference Point (R) of Past Continuous focuses on an extended, temporary time period in the past.
In Diagram 4, we see that the point in time at which our man stops to speak to his friend is in present time. The on-going action of walking to work and thinking about his friend has been interrupted. You can learn more about how English communicates different timeframes in our section Locations in Time and Combining Actions. You can also learn more about the differences between Past Continuous and Past Perfect in our section on Duration of Actions.