Learn English – What tense should I use with “from…to”

Generally speaking, only the first verb in each clause is finite:

They knew what it meant.

Here, know is the finite verb. It changes form to agree with the subject (I know, she knows) and to indicate tense (They know, they knew).

To turn this into a question, we need to apply Subject-Auxiliary Inversion. But to do that, we need an auxiliary, so we add the dummy auxiliary do:

They did know what it meant.

Did they know what it meant?　　←　did and they are inverted

Now do is the finite verb. It changes form to agree with the subject (I do, she does) and to indicate tense (They do, they did). The second verb, know, is non-finite and does not change form.

*Did they knew has two finite verbs and is ungrammatical.

Both versions are 100% grammatically and idiomatically correct. They have nearly identical meanings, but offer slightly different opportunities for usage.

Miguel came to the presentation but he seemed very distracted and he did not listen to anything that the speaker said.

In this sentence, the presentation is over and we know that Miguel never paid attention.

Miguel came to the presentation but he seemed very distracted and he was not listening to anything that the speaker said.

There are two possibilities for this sentence.

1. Alone it means exactly the same as the "did not listen" version.
2. With some additional description of his behavior, it describes Miguel's ongoing actions during the meeting, but offers the possibility that they were interrupted at some point.

Miguel came to the presentation but he seemed very distracted and he was not listening to anything that the speaker said. However, the speaker was so skillful a lecturer that soon he was as captivated as the rest of the audience.

We would use this second version to tell the story of Miguel at the presentation if that story was more involved than "He didn't listen."