Tenses in the English Language: Part 3 - The Past Tense Now, the grand finale—the past tenses: Past Simple, Past Continuous, Past Perfect, Past Perfect Continuous. The past simple describes an action that happened at one point in the past and was completed. For Example: "I played football yesterday." It's best used when you are talking about events or experiences that happened at a specific time, for example, "She visited Paris last summer." The past continuous describes actions that were in progress at a certain point in the past. It is also used to focus on the duration or progress of an action. For example, "I was playing football when it started to rain." This tense helps set the scene or show what is happening in the background during another event. The past perfect is applied in the narrative surroundings of activities that had already reached completion by a time in the past. For example, "By the time she arrived, I had already played football." This tense will clear up the sequence of past events by explaining what happened before another past action. The past perfect continuous is used to describe an action that started before another action in the past and goes on up to the time of the second action. For instance, "I had been playing football for two hours when it started to rain." It denotes an action begun prior to another action in the past and stresses the duration of the period of the first action. These past tenses give a fine grid on which to talk about and tell what happened in the past. Master these, and you'll be better equipped to tell stories, set scenes, and clarify exactly how and when something took place in the past.