I usually get to work by bus
It takes about half an hour
Sometimes I read a book on the way
How about you? How do you get to work?
I travel by bus, it takes about 15 minutes
I get to work by car
I walk to work
I get to work on a tube and I walk some of the way
About 5 minutes’ walk to the station and then I get on a bus, it takes me 20-25 minutes
Mostly, I use the tube
I cycle to work, because it is the easiest and the quickest way
I cycle to work every day on my bike
What do you do on your journey to work?
I usually listen to the music or read
Sometimes I listen to the music and sometimes I read a book
I’d rather read a newspaper or I read books
Cycling in the fresh air, scenery, trying to avoid holes in the road, which are quite dangerous
I dream usually, I love just looking out of window
What is so short, I am not sure that I do very much at all, but I make sure I don’t have an accident
What do you like about it?
It is very short, so my journey to work is only 30 minutes
It is quick, short
I like having some time to think before work
It is quite early in the morning which means the buses are quiet I don’t have to fight for a seat
I love the fresh air and some exercise
I just like the exercise, which I get from it, being outside
It is not too far I can walk or run it is about 40 minutes of work so I feel very healthy, I don’t have to catch a bus
A disaster at sea
We're going to find out about a famous historical disaster and learn how to use past continuous and past simple to describe details about an event.
But to start, look at these images. What historical event do they remind you of?
Read the text and try the activity
The story of the Titanic is one that still captures people's imaginations more than a century after it sank in the North Atlantic Ocean.
It was the biggest passenger liner in the world when it was built in 1912. People said it was 'unsinkable' but they were wrong.
Tragically, the Titanic struck an iceberg while it was crossing the Atlantic Ocean and started to sink. Famously, a string quartet continued to play as the ship was going down.
Most of the people on board died but some were able to escape in lifeboats.
Read the paragraph above again and look at the words in bold. Do you know what they mean? Try this quiz to find out:
Match the word with the correct definition
What do you know about the Titanic?
Now we are going to watch an animated video about the story of Eva Hart. She was a seven-year-old passenger on the Titanic.
But how much do you know about the passenger liner already? Before you watch the video, look at these statements - are they true or false? Do you know? Then watch the video and check your answers.
I was with my parents. My father was going to open a business in Winnipeg. People were saying to my mother and father how fortunate they were to get on the Titanic. I was excited because I was going on a wonderful big ship.
I had no fear or apprehension or anything. She was very beautiful: luxurious beyond words. It was the first time I'd been on board a ship. Captain Smith was on deck and he was very nice. He had a beard like my own grandfather and he admired a doll I had.
On the third night I was sound asleep. My mother woke me and said "I'm going to dress you." But before she could my father came back from deck and said "You'd best put this thick coat on." That was all he said. Standing on deck, I couldn't see around the funnel. My father came back and said "The ship has struck an iceberg." My father had no difficulty in putting me and my mother in lifeboats but he made no attempt to get in himself.
When we were in the water, we could hear people rushing about on the deck. That's when the panic must have started – when they found there weren't any lifeboats left. I was terrified. I didn't know what a shipwreck would mean or how long it would take but I was too terrified to do anything but shriek for my father I knew we'd left behind.
Before she sank, she was a very beautiful ship: stationary on the ocean with all her lights on. It was dreadfully cold but the sea was the calmest I'd ever seen. The starlit night was the brightest I'd ever seen.
I looked back and saw the whole of that tragedy. And I saw that ship break in half. The front part went down and left the stern sticking up in a horrifying fashion. It was enormous. It seemed to stick up in the air for a long time. And then it gradually went down, turning over.
And after that there was the sound of the whole disaster. And that was people drowning. That is something you could never forget. And then the dreadful silence that followed it. It seemed as if the whole world was standing still.
It was discovered that my lifeboat was overcrowded and the officer in charge of the boat decided he would get rid of his load by putting people in other boats. I got separated from my mother and didn't find her until the next day.
The next day, the icebergs were like white sails in the distance: white yachts with the sun on them. They were very beautiful. They were all around us. The crew of the ship that rescued us were very kind and good to us.
We were given clothes because I'd only got my nightclothes and a blanket around me. I had nightmares from the time it sank until I was 23. And though I wouldn't like to say I'm not frightened of the sea, I lost a lot of the horror. I've never been in anything touching the Titanic. A beauty. She was lovely.
Check your answers in this activity.
Are the sentences true or false?
We use the past simple for something that happened and finished in the past. We use it when we say or know the time when something happened. It is often used in stories, when one thing happened after another.
We use the past continuous for something that happened in the past but was not finished at a particular time. This can be an exact time in the past (12 o’clock, etc.) or the time when another thing happened.
We also use the past continuous to describe a scene or situation in the past or for an action that continued for some time.
For regular verbs, the past simple ends in -ed. Irregular verbs have different forms. The past simple form is the same for all persons (I, you, he, she, etc).
The past continuous is subject + was/were + -ing form. There are no short forms of was/were.
We make the negative past simple with didn’t + infinitive.
We make the negative past continuous with wasn’t/weren’t + -ing form
The past simple question form is did + subject + infinitive for all persons. The short answers are Yes, I did. / No, I didn’t.
The past continuous question form is was/were + subject + -ing form. The short answers are Yes, I was. / No, I wasn’t.
In the past continuous, all verbs end in -ing, but sometimes the spelling changes:
take – taking | hit – hitting | die – dying |
There are some verbs that we don’t usually use in the continuous form. They are often verbs related to the senses and thinking, for example: hear, see, smell, hate, know, understand, believe, notice, want, need, seem, wish.
In the past simple and the past continuous, we usually use a contraction with the negative auxiliary verb:
didn’t (= did not) | wasn’t (= was not) |
Past Simple or Past Continuous
I was with my parents. My father was going to open a business in Winnipeg. People were saying to my mother and father how fortunate they were to get on the Titanic. I was excited because I was going on a wonderful big ship.
I had no fear, apprehension, or anything. She was very beautiful: luxurious beyond words. It was the first time I'd been on board a ship. Captain Smith was on deck and he was very nice. He had a beard like my own grandfather and he admired a doll I had.
On the third night I was sound asleep. My mother woke me and said "I'm going to dress you." But before she could by father came back from deck and said "You'd best put this thick coat on." That was all he said. Standing on deck, I couldn't see around the funnel. My father came back and said "The ship has struck an iceberg." My father had no difficulty in putting me and my mother in lifeboats but he made no attempt to get in himself.
When we were in the water, we could hear people rushing about on the deck. That's when the panic must have started – when they found there weren't any lifeboats left. I was terrified. I didn't know what a shipwreck would mean or how long it would take but I was too terrified to do anything but shriek for my father I knew we'd left behind.
Before she sank, she was a very beautiful ship: stationary on the ocean with all her lights on. It was dreadfully cold but the sea was the calmest I'd ever seen. The starlit night was the brightest I'd ever seen.
I looked back and saw the whole of that tragedy. And I saw that ship break in half. The front part went down and left the stern sticking up in a horrifying fashion. It was enormous. It seemed to stick up in the air for a long time. And then it gradually went down, turning over.
And after that there was the sound of the whole disaster. And that was people drowning. That is something you could never forget. And then the dreadful silence that followed it. It seemed as if the whole world was standing still.
It was discovered that my lifeboat was overcrowded and the officer in charge of the boat decided he would get rid of his load by putting people in other boats. I got separated from my mother and didn't find her until the next day.
The next day, the icebergs were like white sails in the distance: white yachts with the sun on them. They were very beautiful. They were all around us. The crew of the ship that rescued us were very kind and good to us.
We were given clothes because I'd only got my nightclothes and a blanket around me. I had nightmares from the time it sank until I was 23. And though I wouldn't like to say I'm not frightened of the sea, I lost a lot of the horror. I've never been in anything touching the Titanic. A beauty. She was lovely.
What were the events Eva told us about? And what order did they happen in? Try the quiz to find out!
We heard Eva talking about the story of what happened to the Titanic. Now let's look at some of the verb forms used to talk about these events in the past.
Look at these sentences:
These sentences contain examples of past simple and past continuous.
The ship struck (past simple) an iceberg while Eva was sleeping (past continuous).
We use the past simple to describe an action that happened and finished in the past. We commonly use it to give the order of events in a narrative.
We use the past continuous to describe an action that was in progress at a particular time in the past but not completed. We often use this tense with a specific time or together with another shorter event.
The past continuous is made from subject + was/were + verb-ing.
Past simple or continuous?
Test yourself on past tenses
Choose the grammatically correct sentence from the options