2. WHAT IS THE
SIMPLE PAST
TENSE?
Well, that’s an easy
question to answer!!
The simple past is a verb
tense that is used to talk
about things that
happened or existed
before now.
YOU NEED TO KNOW THAT:
Unlike the past continuous tense, which is used to talk
about past events that happened over a period of time,
the simple past tense emphasizes that the action is
finished.
3. GRAMMATICAL RULES
-FORM:
First, we need to know that in english, there are REGULAR VERBS
and irregular verbs.
For regular verbs:
• Add -ed to the root form of the verb (or
just -d if the root form already ends in an e).
For example:
Play - Played.
Type - Typed.
In verbs that end with a “y”,
change the “y” for an “i”.
study → studied.
If the verb ends in a short vowel and a
consonant, add the last consonant twice.
Stop → stopped
4. You can also use the simple
past to talk about a PAST
STATE OF BEING!, such as
the way someone felt about
something. This is called
PAST CONTINUOUS.
This is often expressed with
the simple past tense of the
verb to be and an adjective,
noun, or prepositional
phrase.
For example:
They were studying last night.
5. FOR IRREGULAR VERBS.
Things get more complicated here. Irregular verbs are those that DON’T end in
“ed”. Sadly, you will have to learn these cases in order to use the simple past
tense in the correct way.
The simple
past tense of
some irregular
verbs looks
exactly like the
root form:
Put→Put
Cut→Cut
Cost→Cost
For other irregular
verbs, including the
verb to be, the simple
past forms are more
erratic:
See→Saw
Build→Built
Go→Went
Do→Did
6. NOW LET’S SEE SOME EXAMPLES
Regular form:
She danced all night long.
He played the violin.
I studied Frenh when I was a child.
Irregular form:
I thought it was a great idea!
She left her phone at church
(That has happened to me a couple of
times) .
7. FOR NEGATIVE SENTENCES
In this case, things are easy! We just need to use the word “DIDN’T” (which is
short for “did not”). In this case, we do not care who we’re refering to. See
some examples:
I didn’t go to work today. I’m sick.
Instead of taking the verb “go” and change it according to its simple
past form (went), we just used the word “didn’t”, and that way, we
changed the sentence into a negative sentence.
8. IF WE WANT TO MAKE QUESTIONS…
We just follow these simple steps:
Auxiliar verb (to do) + subjet + principal verb (present form)
See some examples:
Did you buy a car last week?
+Yes, I bought a ar last week.
-No, I didn’t buy a car last week. I’m poor
(See? We used the negative sentence form we
just learnt)
9. NOW I’LL LEAVE YOU A LIST WITH SOME VERBS
SO YOU CAN PRATICE A BIT MORE!
Common Regular Verbs in the Past Tense
