Simple Past

5. Simple Past
S + Verb (ed or 2nd)
Yesterday
The day before yesterday
Last week/month/year
Two days ago 

Past simple generally refers to:

Completed actions

   _ She met us at 9 o’clock last night.
   _ They lived here in 1989.
   _ We saw our grandparents three days ago.

Habits

   _ Every day I went to the park.

States

   _ In those days, I didn't like reading.

6. Past Continuous

Past continuous (progressive) generally refers to:

Actions in progress (often interrupted by events)

   _ / was drinking my coffee at the time.

   _ While I was opening the letter, the phone rang.

Background description in narrative

   _ / entered the office and looked around. Most people were working at their desks, but Jane was staring out of the window and pretending to write something at the same time.

Changing states

   _ The car was getting worse all the time. One of the headlights was gradually falling off, and the engine was making more and more funny noises.

Repeated actions - criticism

With a frequency adverb, this use is similar to the use of present continuous to express annoyance.

   _ When Jane was at school, she was always losing things.

7. Past Perfect
S + HAVE/HAS + Past Participle (V-ed or irregular)

We use the past perfect when we are already talking about the past, and we want to go back to an earlier past time ('double past').

   _ By the time I got to the station, the train had left.

Compare this with:

   _ The train left five minutes before I got to the station.

When we talk about a sequence of past events in the order that they happened, we more commonly use the past simple, especially with quick, short actions.

8. Past Perfect Continuous (progressive)

The same contrasts between past simple and past continuous (see previous section) can be made in past perfect verb forms for events further back in the past.

   _ I had been living in a bed-sitter up to then.

   _ While I had been talking on the phone, Jimmy had escaped.

   _ The whole place was deserted, but it was obvious that someone had been living there. They'd been cooking in the kitchen for a start, and they hadn't bothered to clear up the mess.

Past perfect is also common in reported speech.

Past perfect is not used simply to describe an event in the distant past.