Learning Past Tenses in English Through Recent News

English Admin as a blog for learning English has posted present tenses trough quotes. Today we going to learn English Past Tenses through some recent news. As we have stated before, learning English media very from one person to others. Some do like study from picture or movie clips, while we are here try to give you another source, that is news.

After we have studied 4 English Present Tenses. Now we are going to learn Past Tenses. What are past tenses? What time divisions are included in these language structure? And how these tenses are written?

4 Categorized English Tenses In Past Time Division
We we stated in the previous post, actually English tenses are derive from 4 major time line. They are Present, Past, Future, and Past Future. The first time division, present has been discussed here, now we will see what are past division How many tenses are labelled in this Past categorization. See the picture below!

There are 4 tenses labelled as Past Tenses in English time divisions

From the image above, we understand that Past Tenses in English are included Simple Past Tense, Past Continuous Tense, Past Perfect Tense, and Past Perfect Continuous

Some News to Learn 4 English Past Tenses
After discussing the general view on what and how this past tenses in English is labelled, now we are going to see each pattern and the example usage from real news recently written in popular Online media.

1. Past Simple Tense
We used this tense to talk about the past.
FORM:
(+) S + Verb2 + O
Example: She studied math last night
(-) S + did + not + Verb1
Example: She did not studied math last night
(?) did + S + verb1 + O
Example: Did She studied math last night?

Some Recent News  Written Using Past Simple Tense
A large truck plowed through a crowded Christmas market in the center of Berlin on Monday evening… (time.com)
Turkish police detained a man who fired shots in front of the U.S. embassy in Ankara …(time.com)

2. Past Continuous Tense
This tense is used to say when we were in the middle of doing at a particular moment in the past.
FORM:
(+) S + was/were + Verb-ing
Example: He was reading
(-) S + was/were + not + Verb-ing
Example: He wasn’t reading
(?) Was/were + S + Verb-ing
Example: Was He reading?

Some Recent News  Written Using Past Continuous Tense
NZ quake: ‘everything was moving everywhere’ (theaustralian.com.au)
Supplies were running short in the town, which was severely damaged by the quake. (theaustralian.com.au)

3. Past Perfect Tense
The Past Perfect expresses the idea that something occurred before another action in the past. It can also show that something happened before a specific time in the past.
FORM:
S + had+past participle
Example: I had Listen to the radio when she come home

Some Recent News  Written Using Past Perfect Tense
But within minutes of polls closing it was clear he had lost to former Greens leader Alexander Van der Bellen…(reuters.com)
European governments breathed a sigh of relief at the result, as they had done after the May runoff. (reuters.com)

4 Past Perfect Continuous Tense
We use the Past Perfect Continuous to show that something started in the past and continued up until another time in the past. “For five minutes” and “for two weeks” are both duration which can be used with the Past Perfect Continuous. Notice that this is related to the Present Perfect Continuous however, the duration does not continue until now, it stops before something else in the past.
FORM:
S + had + been + Verb-ing
Example: Lina had been study at the university for 1 year before she left to Korea.

Some Recent News  Written Using Past Perfect Continuous Tense
The Chiefs had been travelling back from France following their 20-12 win away to Bordeaux-Begles..(exeterexpressandecho.co.uk)
although we had been working on a specific marathon footwear solution for over a year prior. (wsj.com)

The news which written in bold are the examples for each past tense categories. You can find other more examples from Internet news, articles, and other media. You can learn all real written materials for learning English tenses.

This Past Tenses are  used in a narrative text which is used to talk some stories. These tenses are also used to write news item text which describe what, who, where, and when of the daily events. These Past Tenses are used in spoof text which tell an unpredictable story. And the last text genre which uses Past Tenses as its language feature is recount text which is very similar to narrative but written without any complication inside the story.

That’s all about learning English Past Tenses from recent news written in real media. You can find other examples  when you are reading the up to date news about holidays or the word expression for new year. All are good to read and apply the structure knowledge to get better understanding.

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