Job Discussion Forums

[Stephen Jones]

'yesterday' is a marker for the past, not for the past simple. The students will have been told not to use 'yesterday' with the Present Perfect.

Incidentally there is an Applied Linguistics forum on Dave's
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/viewforum.php?f=3
where these questions are asked and answered on a regular basis.

The continous aspect normally puts emphasis on the time involved. We use it in "I was working yesterday" because the sentence is about how you occupied your time yesterday.

[Ben Round de Bloc]

One of the problems, as I see it, is that with such grammar questions, they're often asked without providing the context/situation, so more than one "correct" answer is often possible.

Q: What were you doing yesterday when the lights went out?
A: I worked yesterday, just like I do every day, so I was working yesterday when the lights went out.

Different "rules of standard usage" apply depending on the context.

It isn't uncommon to see examples of this lack of context on fill-in-the-blank and multiple-choice grammar/usage tests. Sometimes inexperienced test creators/checkers don't consider the possibility of more than one acceptable answer in cases where not enough context is provided.

[texastmblwd69]