AEE 2394: How to Know Which Past Tense to Use in English
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This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2394. How to know which past tense to use in English. Welcome to the All Ears English podcast downloaded more than 200 million times. Are you feeling stuck with your English? We'll show you how to become fearless and fluent by focusing on connection, not perfection with your American host,

Aubrey Carter, the IELTS whiz, and Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA. And to get your transcripts delivered by email every week, go to allearsenglish.com forward slash subscribe.

When you're in a conversation with a native speaker, how do you know if you should use the simple past, the present perfect, or the present perfect progressive? Find out the details and learn when it matters and when it doesn't in today's episode.

Are you feeling stuck at your English level? Are you sure what your real English level is? If you take our free quiz, we'll tell you what level you're stuck at and how to reach your next English milestone. Go to allersenglish.com slash fluency score now. That's fluency score, one word. allersenglish.com slash fluency score.

Hey there, Aubrey. What have you been up to lately? Oh, I have been going to a lot of movies with my kids. Yeah. And mostly because we bought this unlimited popcorn bucket and I want to like get my money's worth filling it every time.

And we watched Snow White yesterday and we all loved it, which was especially surprising because it's been rated and reviewed really low. So my expectations were, but I was surprised. I loved it so much. It's crazy to me that anyone reviewed it low. So then I kind of dove into like why people are reviewing it. And I really disagree with everything they're saying about the movie. So everybody out there listening, go check it out in defense.

side for yourself. I think it's a fantastic film that really modernized the story of Snow White and removed a lot of what was problematic about the original version. So check it out. I loved it. All

All right. All right. Excellent. Well, I am going to the movies this weekend, so I have to decide what movie to see. So we'll see. I know you don't have little kids, so maybe not. But anyone out there who has young children, like this is a great movie. All right. Good to know. Good to know. Excellent. So you've been going to the movies. I love it. So today we're getting into a little grammar. And what you said there, Aubrey, was I have been going to a lot of movies.

Right. So we have the past perfect progressive here. And then I said we watched Snow White. So that's past simple. And that's good to point out that we rarely stick with one verb tense in a sentence. And sometimes we have flexibility because I could say I've gone to I have gone to a lot of movies and just used past perfect there. I could also have used past simple like there's often flexibility.

flexibility, this makes verb tenses really tricky. But it also makes it real. You know, I've been reviewing some of our transcripts from our professional English course, and it's incredible how real our interviews with native speakers are, right? It doesn't follow the textbooks, right? What we said in these conversations, we're always moving from one tense to the other in this way that doesn't feel like it would be covered in a textbook, but it's real English. Because it's not scripted. It's how we actually speak.

Exactly, exactly. So I'm excited to get into this for our listeners today. But first, we want to mention our iOS app reviewers. So

Guys, if you left us a review on the iOS app, Android app, Spotify, Apple podcast, wherever you listen, we love your reviews. We pass them on to the team. Aubrey, this week I sent you some amazing reviews and doesn't it just warm your heart? I loved getting that email to read through all of those reviews, all of the positive feedback. It really does make it all worth it

for us, right? It is huge to hear that. So thank you for every review. Yeah. So special thank you to Antonio Lopez from the Dominican Republic, Mohadese22, Aurora on March 5th, DanB303, and Muska. These are all five-star reviews, Aubrey. It's incredible. Yeah.

Yes. Thank you so much. We love giving you a shout out. We apologize if we don't say your name right, but we want to let you know how grateful we are for those ratings. All of these are five-star ratings. Amazing. And every review, all of the feedback and all of the questions you leave us in these reviews make for great episodes. For sure. So go over and review the podcast wherever you're listening. And this episode is inspired by a student question, right? I

Exactly. This is from Helmut, who goes by Heli. Shout out to Heli, who asks great questions in our community. Whenever you sign up for any of our courses, you're automatically admitted into our community. You get live speaking practice, you get answers to your questions, and they often inspire really good conversations among community members. And as soon as I saw this one, I said, I'm going to make an episode for All Ears English out of this because we get this question a lot.

it's such a good one i'm excited to dive into this oh okay i'm gonna go ahead and read the question okay um it's a little bit of a long one so buckle in right buckle up buckle in but let's listen in because we're gonna get a lot out of today's episode so here it is

I'm trying to figure out when to use the correct past tense and I'm unsure when to use past simple, present perfect, and present perfect continuous. For example, I talked to her. I've talked to her anytime in the past and it has no relevant to the present.

no relevance to the present. But why should I say that? And in what case should I say that? That makes no sense, right? Aubrey, why don't you read the next piece so that it's not just me reading. I've talked to her. It's like I have talked to her. I have talked to her in the past. The process is completely finished, but it has relevance to the present.

I have talked to her and she promised me she will change her behavior. Is the simple past in this case generally the wrong tense? Because why should I say that when it has no influence on the present? I have been talking to her. I've talked to her in the past, but the result is not finished.

I have been talking to her about the project and we will finish it tomorrow. It's very confusing because we do not have these tenses in German. Oh, it's such a good question. This has been tricky for me learning French and Spanish because we can't translate directly. We see that the verb tenses work differently in different languages and we need to understand. You guys see that

English language users often are very flexible with this. You see them use two different ones for the same situation or two native speakers will do it differently. Is it a mistake? Is it not? There's probably more flexibility than textbooks teach you. Oh, okay. So don't worry, guys. We do have two

core rules, I guess we could call these rules, right? And categories that you can go by as a rule of thumb when you decide what tends to use, right? Exactly. Because sometimes any of them work, which actually seems to make it more confusing. So we have these two buckets. This is really going to help clarify. The first one is when it is unimportant to the message

or the story you're telling, you can often choose any of these tenses. And this is what can be the most confusing if you're just trying to track native speakers and what they're saying. So if we take Helmut's example, for example, right? You talked to someone and she promised to change. If the person you're telling this to won't care when you talk to her or how many times, any of these past tense verb tenses could work.

They each have a slightly different implication, but it's so subtle and it may not matter to the story. And when it doesn't matter, native speakers use them interchangeably. Yeah.

Okay, I love it. So for let's give some examples here, right? So when we use the present perfect, I've talked to her and she promised to change. Okay, so maybe we talked to her multiple times, or maybe we will again, but maybe we won't talk to her again. It could have just been once that she promised to change and never again, right? Exactly. And it doesn't really matter to the story. So we might use present perfect, or

Or we might use past simple, right? It really depends on whether it matters to the story. So especially in conversational English, native speakers will use these pretty interchangeably when it doesn't matter.

Okay. What about with the simple past here? If it doesn't matter. With the same sentence, I might say, I talked to her and she promised to change. Maybe I spoke to her just once at a specific time and I won't need to again, but it could also be true that I talked to her multiple times. It really doesn't matter to the story. It doesn't matter to the person I'm telling. And so I might use past simple.

Right. Or you could use the present perfect continuous. It doesn't really matter. I've been talking to her and she promised to change. We could have talked many times or maybe we just talked once earlier today. Right. But it's irrelevant. Exactly. If it doesn't matter to the story, any of them work.

Now we get to the second bucket because when it is important to the story, which past tense you choose matters. And often what will happen is you'll be telling a story and you'll use whatever verb tense you want. But then if someone does, suddenly it does matter because someone asks a specific question like, wait, when did you talk to her? Or how many times did you talk to her? Then you're going to need to use the correct tense to be clear about what happened.

Yeah. Like if you're a detective, right, you hear them use a certain tense that might flag you for asking another question. Yeah. Sometimes it matters. I think about I had a conversation with my brother recently where he had talked to a friend of mine that they were potentially going to start dating. I'm like, but wait, when did you talk to her last and how many times have you talked to her? It matters. Yeah.

- Yeah, I want the right verb tense. - Yeah, it's kind of funny how sometimes grammar is just, it doesn't matter that much. And sometimes it really, really does for the meaning and we grab onto any hints that we can find and that is grammar is one of them. So again, we're moving over to the second scenario, which is when the tense is important to the story, right? Which past tense you choose does matter, okay? - Right, so for instance, if someone asks you, wait, how many times did you talk to her about that?

You would use the present simple if you want to say, we just talked once or we talked a few times and you're talking about specific instances that are completed in the past, then you'll use present simple.

Yes. Okay. Or present perfect. We've talked multiple times and might need to talk again tomorrow. Right? Different meaning. Exactly. Right? This is an action that happened in the past, but might happen again. Might be a repeated action. Then you'll use present perfect. Or the present perfect continuous. How would this look, Aubrey? You might say, we've been talking for weeks. Right?

And then we're using that we have been verb ing to emphasize like, okay, we've been talking. Yeah, that would matter. That would place a lot of meaning in those words in that grammar choice. Exactly. So sometimes it doesn't matter if...

It doesn't matter to the story. We think about, often we'll talk about TMI. Are you providing too many details? Are you worried about the verb tense when it doesn't matter to the story? Then you can choose any of these, right? It doesn't matter. But if it does matter, it's vital that you know which of these tenses to use and why, what it implies about what happened. So we have to know when the grammar actually matters. Yeah, we're going to get into the role play in just a minute here. Yes.

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okay aubrey let's get into a role play so we can see this all presented to our listeners very clearly so perfect here we go so hey uh i've been talking to her about the project oh wait when did you talk to her oh i talked to her wednesday and then again today we've emailed back and forth about it and we're meeting to finalize the details today at four okay this is really good so the first thing lindsay said she could have used any of these she could have said i talked to her about the project

I have talked to her about the project or I've been talking to her about the project because it doesn't matter at that time. Like for all you know, I don't care when you talk to her, but then for some reason I need to know why. Cause maybe I talked to her about the project and I need to know if it was before or after. Then you did. Right. So I ask, when did you talk to her? This is past simple. I'm asking for specifics and I need you to use the correct verb tense to be clear.

Yeah, I think about past simple as really zooming in here. We're zooming into the exact point, the exact moment with a camera lens or something, right? Exactly. Wait, when did you talk to her? Now we're getting details. We're getting specifics here, right? Exactly.

Exactly. So then you say, I talked to her Wednesday and this has to be past simple because you are talking about a finished action in the past that happened at a specific time. Of course, you have to mirror the tense because you're asking me a specific question, right? You're asking for a day. And so I have to give you that exact day and I have to use the simple past there.

Well, it's interesting. It would like, let's imagine that you have talked to her every day for two months about this. Then what you said would be different. You'd say, I've been talking to her about this every day. But the fact that you only talked to her once on Wednesday, you're going to use past simple. I love it. And then I said, we've emailed back and forth about it and we're meeting to finalize today. Okay. So we've emailed back and forth. Yeah.

Yeah. So using present perfect here, we have emailed, is letting me know it has happened many times and we're probably going to need to continue emailing about it. That's when we use present perfect, an action in the past that continues to now and is probably going to keep continuing.

Yes, I love it. This was a great question, but we only had time to really scratch the surface. So, you know, if you're really interested in building up your grammar skills, get into our courses. You know, we go through this stuff in B1, B2, C1. We build your fluency foundation for grammar too, right? Absolutely. And if you missed it, scroll up because we just did a two-part series on past progressive grammar.

So you can go up and see 2374, Past Progressive Grammar for English Interruptions. We really dove into when we use the past progressive and you don't want to miss that series.

I love it. Aubrey, where should we leave our listeners today? We had a great question from our student. Where should we leave our listeners? Yeah, past tense is especially confusing in English because sometimes you can choose any of them, any of these verb tenses. It makes it difficult to know exactly why native speakers are using a specific past tense. I totally get why Heli, Helmut, was confused seeing the flexibility here. So today's tips will help you know which past tense to use in English.

Yeah, I think the key is just knowing, right? Looking out for it, thinking about it. So when we go to deliver a phrase or a sentence in the past tense, we're thinking, does it matter what grammar I'm using here or does it not? Right? And pay attention when people are coming back to you with a specific question.

what tense are they using? Right? Right. Doesn't matter for the story. If not, don't worry about it. If it does, if it really matters when you talked and why or when you ate that and why or how many times then then it does matter. I love it. So good. Good stuff. And guys, don't forget to go and leave us a review for All Ears English wherever you listen, whether it's in the iOS Android app or Spotify, Apple podcast, leave us a review and we'll announce your name on the show.

All right. Yes. Awesome. Thanks, Lindsay. It's always fun getting into grammar with you. I love it. It always is. It always is. We'll see you next time, Aubrey. Take care. Awesome. See you next time. Bye.

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