Past simple/Past continuous/Past perfect/Past perfect continuous
26
Grammar in use
2
c
see pp. GR6-GR8
Put the verbs in bold into the
past simple
or
the
past continuous
.
1
A: What ....................
(cause)
the accident?
B: The driver ........................
(lose)
control
of the car and then it ................
(crash)
into another vehicle.
2
A: ........................
(you/hear)
the thunder?
B: Yes. I ..................................
(walk)
back
home at the time.
3
A: While the plane ..........................
(land)
,
an engine ...........................
(catch)
fire.
B: That’s terrible. .......................................
(everyone/get)
out alive?
4
A: What .............................
(you/do)
when
the earthquake started?
B: I ..............................
(read)
a magazine
while Laura ...............................
(cook)
.
2
Use the phrases in brackets to make
sentences using the
past perfect
or the
past
perfect continuous
, as in the example.
1
They were afraid.
(see a bear)
They had seen a bear.
2
He was tired.
(sweep water from his house)
3
Mary was worried.
(Tom leave the map at
home)
4
He felt angry.
(wait for the police for an hour)
5
The roads were flooded.
(rain all week)
6
Harry’s head was sore.
(a tree fall on him)
4
Choose the best verb forms.
1
He
had spent/had been spending
16 days
at sea before they found him.
2
He
was waiting/had waited
for the bus when
the accident happened.
3
It
was snowing/snowed
and the wind
had
howled/was howling
as I closed the door.
4
Rescue teams
looked/were looking
for
people trapped in the building while the
firefighters
had tried/were trying
to put out
the fire.
5
The accident happened because the driver
had been talking/was talking
on his mobile
and
hadn’t seen/didn’t see
the car in front
of him.
6
Ben
was walking/walked
on the beach,
when he
had noticed/noticed
the shipwreck.
7
Rescue teams
had been trying/were
trying
to locate the 14-year-old boy for 10
hours before they
had managed/managed
to find him.
3
Read the news article. Is it
formal
or
informal
?
Identify the tenses in bold (1-6) and match
them to their uses (A-F).
A
an action that happened at a certain time in
the past (there is a direct/indirect reference
to the time)
B
actions which happen one after another in
the past
C
an action which had been in progress before
another action in the past
D
simultaneous actions in the past
E
an action which was in progress in the past
and another action interrupted it
F
an action which happened before another
action in the past
1
Four people were injured when an electric train
1) derailed
last
Friday evening. The train
2) was travelling
near Gdynia and
was
carrying
100 passengers at the time of the accident. At around
7:15 local time, while the train
3) was coming
around a sharp
curve, three carriages came off the tracks. According to eyewitness
reports, passengers
4) had heard
a violent explosion just before
the train derailed. Teams of emergency workers
5) arrived
at the
scene and
began
to pull out passengers trapped inside the
carriages. The cause of the derailment is under investigation.
Authorities confirmed that a railway crew
6) had been working
on
the tracks for several hours before the accident happened.
Electric train derails
Contextualized
grammar
presentation
1...,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13 15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,...80