Simple Past vs. Past Progressive

By Category: English Applied Linguistics (EAL)

Simple Past versus Past Progressive

What is/are the core meaning(s) of SP?

  • Actions and states that began and ended in past.
  • Factual, completed action or state in the past
  • Remote from present with no possibility of continuing
  • Often used for narrative and description

What is/are the core meaning(s) of PP?

  • Actions in progress (and not completed) in the past
  • Actions continuing for a period of time in the past
  • An action that was interrupted (by a SP action)

What’s similar?

  • Completed actions relative to speaker’s present time
  • Habitual or ongoing past action (It snowed for three days; She was working there for nine months.)
  • Social distance (Did you want to go to the movie? Were you interested in getting a cup of coffee?)

What’s different?

  • SP unchanging. Also: complete, factual and remote (“so done”).
  • PP has potential to change. Also: incomplete or continuing over a period of time in the past (i.e. implies duration); often not used with stative verbs (e.g. “The box was containing presents.”)
  • Form: regular SP ends in –ed; PP has past of “to be” + verb + ing
  • PP can give background info for a story while SP gives action.

Why might Ss experience difficulties distinguishing the two?

  • Because of the overlap between the two forms, as detailed under What’s Similar? Sometimes they can be interchanged.
  • Because the learner’s language might not distinguish between the two English forms.

Are these challenges form- or meaning-related?

  • Meaning-related.

Strategies and other scaffolding to help Ss notice, understand and internalize?

  • Adverbials for simple past: a long time ago, last week, in 2003, for many years, yesterday, this morning…
  • Adverbial for PP: While, when, as…

What topics can trigger big-time production of the forms?

  • Choral or BB: Show a scene depicting a happening such as a natural disaster (or something more cheerful). For SP, get Ss to describe what happened. Then model questions about what happened before: “What was he doing before the volcano erupted?” And have them create the pre-scene in PP.
  • Write adverbials above on the board and have Ss write verbs with them till they have a ton. Then have them write and compare the PP form from those prompts.
  • After some practice: Have students produce the form with prompts [What were you doing last week? What did you do last week?]. Collect a bunch of examples in two columns. Get them to put the forms in sentences. And then get them to write two sentences, one with each form. In groups get them to try to articulate the difference in meaning.
  • Topics: Ancient history (dinosaurs, their experience coming to this country, natural and manmade disasters and mysterious phenomena, illustrations of action scenes…

Activities: effective, memorable, fun and empowering?

  • Basic: [From Grammar Links 2, 2005, p 77]: Give them two related, sequential, simple past tense sentences. Have them put a check over the one that happened first. Then have them combine them into single sentence in proper order, with first (interrupted) action in PP.
  • Get them to tell/write a story about something exciting that happened to them. Have them use PP to set the scene. Use SP to create the action.
  • Ask what they were doing before they came to this country, what was it like there, as many questions as they need as prompts to set the scene for their departure. Then give them another prompt or several: Once you got here, what did you do? Where did you go?
  • From Grammar Practice Activities (Penny Ur, Cambridge, 2009, pp. 212–216): SEE PICTURE
  1. Show Ss picture for 2:00 and then hide it
  2. Write on BB: What can you tell me about [the dog] [the jogger] [the driver of the car] [the tables] [etc]
  3. Ss write answers
  4. T try too
  5. Show pic again and Ss self-check
  6. Review answers

My Sample Lesson Plan

  1. SHOW THEM cosmos picture.
  2. Brainstorm vocab words
  3. Ss write words on BB and discuss
  4. Ask Ss to look at man. Use imaginations! Why is he leaving his world? What is it like? Ask Ss to describe the setting and what was going on before he left.
  5. T writes prompts, and Ss model once: When the man left his old world, the sun was ____.
  6. Ss describe the world as it was when the man was leaving. 7:00.
  7. T writes new prompts: What happened after he left? What did he find in his new world? 7:00.
  8. Share stories in small or large groups.
  9. Make two columns on the board (SP and PP) and have Ss write their verbs in the proper column.