Past Continuous Tense vs. Past Simple: The Mysterious Stalker (English / ESL Video)
Past Continuous Tense vs. Past Simple: The Mysterious Stalker (English / ESL Video)
Synopsis of English / ESL Video
Watch the suspense thriller short about Elissa and the mysterious stalker & present the past continuous tense vs. past simple to students in a pre-intermediate level lesson.
Title of English / ESL Video
Elissa and the Mysterious Stalker
Target English Grammar
Past Continuous Tense vs. Past Simple Tense. (Also known as Past Progressive Tense and Simple Past Tense)
Student Proficiency Level
Pre-intermediate level grammar
Suggested Courses
General English.
Instructions
– Play the video in class after delivering a warm-up activity first.
– Pause the video whenever the narrator asks students a question to give students time to answer. For example, after elicitations and concept checking questions (CCQs).
Summary of English Grammar: Past Continuous Tense vs. Past Simple
Approximate chronological order:
Storyline:
– Starts at 0:00. Ends at 2:40.
English Grammar Rules and Explanations:
Function:
– To talk about an action still in progress in the past.
Timeline:
– Someone was chasing her.
– Someone started chasing her in the past, but we don’t know when.
– That person stopped chasing her some time in the past. Again, we don’t know when.
– We are talking about the whole period from the beginning of the chase to the end.
Specific Uses:
– Background event:
– On a cold dark night, Elissa was working late at the office.
– This sentence sets the setting and the background of the story.
Simple Past:
– To talk about completed or repeated actions.
– She quickly ran into the cemetery.
– This action is finished and completed.
– When we use two simple past actions, the second action happened after the first action. For example,
– She quickly ran into the cemetery and hid there.
– So she ran into the cemetery first, then she hid inside the cemetery.
Combining the Past Progressive Tense with the Simple Past:
– Past progressive = longer action
– Past simple = shorter action
– The shorter action happened while the longer action was still in progress. But sometimes these two actions happen at the same time.
– Example: As she was leaving her office, she realised the streets were now empty.
– Elissa leaving her office is the longer action.
– Elissa realising the streets were empty is the shorter action.
– So Elissa was leaving her office and during this time, she noticed the streets were now empty. But she didn’t stop leaving the office when she noticed this.
Specific Uses:
– Interruption: Sometimes a shorter action interrupted a longer action.
– Example: While she was walking back home, she heard some footsteps behind her. She turned around to look.
– Elissa walking back home is the longer action.
– Hearing the footsteps is the shorter action.
– In this case, the footsteps interrupted her walking and made her stop to look back before she continued walking again.
Multiple Progressive Actions in the Same Sentence:
– Multiple actions happening at the same time.
– Example: I was walking home and someone was following me.
– We don’t know which action started first.
– We also don’t know which action finished first.
– We only know that during a certain period in the past these two actions were happening at the same time.
– We can use more than two past progressive actions in the same sentence, and all these actions were happening at the same time some time in the past.
Form:
Statements:
Subject + was/were + verb (-ing) + …
Elissa + was + working + late.
Yes/No Questions:
Was/were + subject + verb (-ing) + …?
Was + Elissa + working + late?
Open Questions:
Wh-/How + was/were + subject + verb (-ing) + …?
Why + was + Elissa + working + late?
Conjunctions:
– We use conjunctions to join past simple and progressive actions.
– Example conjunctions: while, when, as.
– Example sentence 1: While she was walking back home, she heard some footsteps behind her.
– Example sentence 2: When Elissa was hiding, the footsteps stopped.
– Example sentence 3: As she was running, she saw a cemetery.
Switching the Order of the Tenses:
– We can also place the simple past action at the front of the sentence before the past continuous action.
– Example: She heard some footsteps behind her while she was walking back home.
Concept Checking Questions (CCQs)
Download Video’s Script
*** English / ESL Video: No Music Version ***
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It is lively learning techniques. Keep up, but try to focus on common mistakes and pronunciation or inclusive english.
Thank you for the feedback Chala. If you’d like our videos to talk about common mistakes and teach pronunciation, we can definitely put those in our future videos!
Wonderful fior my students
Thank you! I’m sure your students will enjoy it!
the videos are great, but i would like to know where to start to see schedule
By “schedule” did you mean “content” of each video? If this is what you mean, then below the title of each video is a down arrow. You click this down arrow to expose the description and the content is listed below. Cheers.
Can you please provide a transcript about all the things (starting from the story until the detailed discussion for this lesson)? Just in case, playing the video won’t work, then the teacher/student can just read the script/details? Pleaseeee. Thanks a lot!
Of course, we can 🙂 We’ll get onto that as soon as possible!
The videos are great ,I really liked it .
Thanks Enas! Cheers!
Do you videos about the comparison between present simple and present continuous .If you don’t mind .
Yes, we can definitely make a video about these grammar structures in the future. Thanks for the request!
Do you provide subtitles for the films?
We wouldn’t recommend playing this video with subtitles. One big part of it is practising listening. But we do have the transcript. It’s at the bottom of the description. Cheers.
It’s really vert interesting. It Phelps foreign learners tout understand grammar un a simple ans effective way. Thank youu
For me this video is wonderful! It’s an creative and insightful way to present and practice this topic. Congrats guys! (I would only recommend to try to make the narrator voice more audible. My students had a hard time trying to understand what he was saying. I know it’s a way to add mistery and suspense, but it reallt makes the audio difficult to understand)