Six Minute Grammar from BBC Learning English.
Hello.
Welcome to Six Minute Grammar with me.
Finn and me, Catherine.
Hello.
In today's program, we're talking about narrative tenses.
Yes, narrative tenses.
That means the past simple tense, the past continuous, the past perfect, and the past perfect continuous.
Yes.
We use these tenses to describe events that happened in the past and for telling stories.
We'll explain when to use each tense.
We'll give you lots of examples and.
There'Ll be a quiz at the end of the show.
So listen carefully.
Let's begin with the past simple.
We use the past simple tense for events and actions that started and finished in the past.
Here's Mike with our first example.
I had a terrible day last Monday.
It all started when I woke up late.
So those three verbs had started and woke up are all in the past simple because they describe events which started and finished in the past.