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2a I asked them to be quiet. I was trying to hear what the man was saying. 2b I thought she looked thinner. Apparently, she was slimming. 2c We had moved the dining - table into the kitchen - we were eating there during the cold weather. These three sentences describe situations in past time parallel to the present situations in sentence 1a - 1c above. In sentence 2a, the progressive indicates an activity in progress at that very moment of past time. In 2b, it indicates an activity of limited duration over a longer (unspecified) period of past time; while in 2c, it refers to a series of actions limited in duration to the period mentioned ('during the cold weather'). In 2a, the actual time at which the activity was in progress is suggested by the context (i.t. at the time when I asked them to be quiet), but in such sentences, the time is often specified by an adverbial: At 11 o'clock, I was working in the garden. When the storn broke, We can contrast the use of the past progressive and the past simple in the main clause: a When our visitor arrived, my wife was making tea. b When our visitor arrived, my wife made tea. In a, tea-making was in progress when our visitor arrived, whereas in b, tea-making took place after (and probably as a result of) our visitor's arrival. The past progressive is also used to draw attention to continuous activity during a specified period in the past: 3a I was working all day last Saturday. 3b I was giving a lesson between two o'clock and three. In many such sentences, however, there may be very little difference between the past simple and the past progressive: We watched television all evening. We were watching television all evening. The Phrase all evening itself expresses the idea of duration, and the progressive form simply reinforces that idea. This is yet another example where the choice of one form rather than the other represents little more than a difference in attitude or emphasis on the part of the speaker. |