The past tense in English has 4 basic forms: simple past, past progressive, past perfect and past perfect progressive.

The simple past describes an action that started and finished in the past.

Ex: I went to the mall last Friday.

      Class ended early.

The past progressive describes a past action that was happening when another action occurred.

Ex: The telephone was ringing when I walked in the door.

       I got pick pocketed while I was shopping.

The past perfect describes an action that happened before another action in the past.

Ex: By the time I noticed that my money was gone, the thief

      had escaped.

      The dog had already eaten the carrot before the owner 

      realized.

The past perfect progressive describes an ongoing past action that happened before another action in the past.

Ex: I had been visiting the doctor regularly before my

      insurance policy expired.

      They had been dating for several months before they 

      got engaged.

 Drag ‘Net: Radical Web site content lands a cyberactivist in jail.

       When Jennifer Martin Ruggiero returned home on January 24, 2002, to find her yard filled with Los Angeles police officers, FBI agents, and Secret Service officers, she thought somebody was shooting a film. But the drama unfolding there was more surreal than anything Hollywood could invent.

        Inside, agents were grilling her 18-year-old son, Sherman Austin, about his Web site, Raisethefist.com. They left without making any arrests and Ruggiero had no reason to believe anything more would come of it. As she told LA Weekly (July 11, 2003), “Everyone was very nice.”

         New York City police arrested him and held him for questioning. Thirty hours later, he was released—only to be picked up by FBI agents, who held him without charges for another 13 days. It wasn’t until six months later that Austin was informed that the government was going to seek an indictment against him. “Posting information on explosives is not illegal, but doing it with intent is, which is what I’m charged with,” he told the anarchist magazine Clamor (March/April 2004). “But how do you prove intent? It’s almost like ‘thought crime.’”

        The FBI reportedly knows the author of the Reclaim Guide information but has refused to prosecute him, claiming instead in court testimony that Austin wrote the material. Austin and his attorney eventually negotiated a plea bargain with the federal prosecutor that would limit his jail time to one month followed by five months of custody in a halfway house. But when District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson was informed of the plea bargain at the June 30, 2003, court hearing, he said the case had “national [and] international overtones” and rejected the plea as being too lenient.

        He ordered the prosecutor to confer with the FBI and the Justice Department, which recommended a one-year prison sentence, a $2,000 fine and three years of probation, during which Austin is not allowed to use any computer for any organizing work or associated with progressive organizations. With a possible 20-year sentence hanging over his head as a result of PATRIOT Act laws, Austin and his lawyer had no choice but to acquiesce. He’s currently serving time at a federal prison in Tucson, Arizona.

        Austin calls his experience a sign of what lies ahead for progressives in post-9/11 America. “If it happened to me, it can definitely happen to you,” he said. “But don’t be scared, because that’s what they want. Once they have you in a state of fear, they have you in control.”

--Craig Fox, UTNE July- August 2004.

Write examples of each verb tense in the column below.

If there are no examples, write sentences (about the article/interview) using the missing tense.

Write your own rule describing the usage of each verb tense.

Simple past

Past progressive

Past perfect

Past perfect progressive