WHEN AND WHILE
Simple Past
Past Progressive
past form of 'be' + ing form of
verb
irregular verbs:
 I spoke
regular verbs: verb + ed
 I worked
 I was speaking
 you were speaking
 he / she / it was speaking
 we were speaking
 they were speaking
• We use the past continuous tense to express a long action. And
we use the simple past tense to express a short action.
•
If you want to express that a new action (short action)
happened in the middle of an action in progress (long action), you
need both tenses: Simple Past for the new action and Past
Progressive for the action already in progress..
We can join the two ideas with when or while.
In the following example, we have two actions:
1. long action (watching TV), expressed with
past continuous tense
I was watching TV at 8 pm.
2. short action (telephoned), expressed with
simple past tense
You telephoned at 8 pm.
We can join these two actions with when or
while :
I was watching TV when you telephoned.
you telephoned while I was watching TV
We use:
•
When is used for shorter actions, and while is used for longer actions.
When is usually used with simple tenses, and while with progressive
tenses.
when + short action (simple past tense)
while + long action (past continuous tense)
For example, let’s look at two actions, one short and one long:
Short action – Fall down (it only takes a second to fall down)
Long action – Ride a bike (bike rides can last a long time)
Because one is long and one is short, these two actions
can’t happen at the same time. The short action interrupts
the long action:
I was riding my bike when I fell down.
I fell down while I was riding my bike.
Let’s consider two more actions:
Reading a book
Telephone ringing
It is clear that the telephone ringing is the
shorter action, it only takes a few seconds:
I was reading a book when the telephone rang.
The telephone rang while I was reading a book