Ask the questions and give responses to them

Teacher: Ask your fellow-student if he/she was doing his/her grammar exercises between nine and ten yesterday.

Student 1: Were you doing your grammar exercises between nine and ten yesterday?

Student 2: Yes, I was.

Ask you fellow-student:

if the students were asking or answering questions during the lesson;

what games they were playing the whole day yesterday;

with whom he/she was having some practice in spelling between five and six o’clock yesterday afternoon;

what the students were doing all the time while teacher was marking their dictations;

when he/she was going to write to his/her parents.

Note. The Past Continuous of the verbs to expect, to intend, to hope, to plan, to mean may be used to show that the planned action was not carried out, e.g. I was meaning to go there.

Note. The Past Continuous is used to denote an action thought of as continuous process generally characterizing the subject. In this case the adverbs always, constantly, continually, for ever, etc. are used. The Past Continuous in this use is often to be found in emotional speech.

e.g. She was constantly laughing as she was always trying to attract attention at all costs.

Pracise aloud after the teacher and comment on the use of the Past Continuous.

1. Tom was always putting off some difficult work to the very last moment.

2. I was always forgetting the simplest things in the exams.

3. She was always smiling, we couldn’t take her seriously.

4. Ann was always busily taking notes of the lectures, that’s why she couldn’t hear when e tried to speak to her.