The English language employs several past tense forms that help express different types of completed actions and ongoing events in the past.
The Past Progressive (also called past continuous) describes ongoing actions in the past. Its formation follows the pattern "was/were + verb-ing." Common signal words (Past Progressive Signalwörter) include "while," "as," and "during." For example: "I was studying when my friend called." In German (Past Progressive auf deutsch), this translates to actions using "war/waren" with the main verb. Past Progressive Bildung requires understanding subject-verb agreement - "was" for singular subjects (I, he, she, it) and "were" for plural subjects (we, you, they). Past Progressive Verneinung (negation) simply adds "not" after was/were: "She was not sleeping."
The relationship between Simple Past and Past Perfect is crucial for expressing the sequence of past events. The Simple Past describes completed actions in the past, while the Past Perfect shows actions that happened before another past event. Signal words (Simple Past Past Perfect Signalwörter) help distinguish between these tenses - "before," "after," "already," and "just" often indicate Past Perfect usage. Simple Past und Past Perfect einfach erklärt demonstrates this relationship: "When I arrived (Simple Past), she had already left (Past Perfect)." For future expressions, the Going to-future Bildung and Will-future Bildung serve different purposes. Going to-future Verwendung typically expresses planned future actions or predictions based on present evidence, formed with "am/is/are going to + verb." Common Going to-future Signalwörter include "soon," "next week," and "tomorrow." Going to-future Beispiele might include "I am going to visit my grandmother next weekend" or "It is going to rain." Practice with Going to-future Übungen and Simple Past vs Past Perfect Übungen helps reinforce proper usage of these tenses through contextual examples and exercises.
