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Past simple or past continuous?

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The first one is more natural if you are referring to an action that was in progress at 8 o'clock. But it is not possible to omit the subject in English, pronoun " I " in this case.

If you are referring to an action that was concluded before 8 o'clock, you should use Past Perfect and a different preposition, " by 8 o'clock" in this case.

E.g.: I had finished my homework by 8 o'clock last night.

Both sentences are syntactically incorrect, i.e. the word order is not respected. 

You have two options: 1) to use a comma for emphasis: At 8 o'clock last night , I was doing my homework; 2) to put the whole adverbial phrase after the object: I was doing my homework at 8 o'clock last night .

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  • Verb Tense Intro.
  • Types of Verbs
  • Active/Passive
  • Simple Present
  • Present Continuous
  • Simple Past
  • Past Continuous
  • Present Perfect
  • Present Perf. Cont.
  • Past Perfect
  • Past Perfect Cont.
  • Simple Future
  • Future Continuous
  • Future Perfect
  • Future Perfect Cont.
  • Would Always
  • Future in the Past

Verb Tense Exercise 4 Simple Past and Past Continuous

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