Question

In English, what is an imperfect tense?

Answer 1

Hint: Tenses tell us about the state of an event/activity/person and about time. There are three main tenses: present, past and future. These tenses are further divided into 4 parts each. The 4 subparts are simple, perfect, continuous and perfect continuous.

Complete answer:
Imperfect tenses are also known as past continuous tense or past progressive tense. Like ‘perfect’ tense denotes ‘an action which is completed’ similarly imperfect tense is a tense that denotes ‘an action which was incomplete’ and occurred in a past time. It is an ongoing action in the past. As a past continuous tense, the imperfect tense tells about an event/ action that ‘occurred during a period of time’.

Examples of sentences in the imperfect tenses are as follows-
She was dancing in the rain.
She was preparing the dinner.
They were talking to the sports teacher.
He was driving his way back home.

Note: Present participle forms of the verb are the verbs that have -ing at the end of the word or that are given in the -ing form. For e.g. dancing, singing, eating, walking etc. This tense is mainly used for writing novels, reports or articles. Imperfect tenses are not similar to past perfect tenses because past perfect tenses show ‘an action that was completed in the past’. But, imperfect tenses are continuous in the past and yet, are not relevant to the ‘present time’.