Dictionaries tell you what words mean. They don't tell you why the sentence is built the way it is — and past B1, that's what actually stops you.
Tap any line in a transcript and it gets taken apart: how difficult it is, its tense, voice and structure, the grammar patterns worth noticing, its key vocabulary, and a translation. Then keep asking. "Why not the past simple here?" gets a real answer, about that exact sentence.