Skip to content
Docs for dummies

Verbs, Past tense

The past: habitual events and specific incidents

Narrative tenses: describing specific incidents in the past

This happened when I was about five years old. My father had gone away on business for a few days and my brother and I were sleeping in my parents’ bedroom. Before we went to bed that night, I had been reading a very scary story about a wicked witch. In the middle of the night, I woke up with a start and saw that a figure in a dark coat was standing in the doorway. I screamed at the top of my voice.

When we describe specific incidents in the past, we use narrative tenses, i.e. the past simple, past continuous, and past perfect simple or continuous - We use the past simple to talk about the main actions in a story (We went to bed. .., I woke up. I screamed). - We use the past continuous to set the scene (We were sleeping in my parents’ bedroom) and to describe actions in progress in the past (Somebody was standing in the doorway). - We use the past perfect and the past perfect continuous to talk about the earlier past, i.e. things which happened before the main event (My father had gone away… I had been reading a story).

used to and would: describing habitual events and repeated actions in the past

  1. Every summer, my family used to rent an old house in the south of France. My sister and I often walked to the harbour in the morning, where we used to watch the fishermen cleaning their nets.

  2. Every night before we went to bed, my mother would tell US stories, but she would never read them from a book - she would always make them up herself.

  3. When I was a teenager, my friends were always teasing me because of my red hair.

  4. We often use used to + infinitive as an alternative to the past simple to talk about things that we did repeatedly in the past.

    • We can also use used to + infinitive to talk about situations or states which have changed, e.g. I used to have much longer hair when I was younger.

  5. We use would + infinitive as an alternative to used to to talk about things that we did repeatedly in the past over a period of time.

    • We don’t use would with stative verbs, i.e. to talk about situations or states which have changed. NOT I-would-have-much-longer-hair- when-I-was-younger.
    • We don’t use would without a time reference, e.g. I used to play the violin. NOT I-would-play-the violin.

  6. We can also use always + past continuous for things that happened repeatedly, especially when they were irritating habits.

used to and be / get used to Be careful not to confuse used to and be / get used to. used to only describes states or repeated actions in the past, be / get used to means be fget familiar with, e.g We used to live in London. We moved to the country last year, but we re still not used to it It’s too quret for me, and my husband can’t get used to having to drive everywhere.