Simple Past

Past Simple by Gloria Callejas Barrera is licensed under a Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-SinObraDerivada 4.0 Internacional License.

To talk about actions that happened at a specific time in the past. You use a time expression. (yesterday, last month.)

It can be used to describe events that happened over a period of time in the past.

It is also used to talk about habitual or repeated actions that took place in the past.

WHEN WE USE PAST SIMPLE:

TIME EXPRESSIONS

* Yesterday, last week, last month, last year, last time, … ago, in 1994,etc.

We cooked sushi 2 years ago.

* Affirmative:

The past tense of regular verbs is formed by adding –d or –ed to the verb.

PAST SIMPLE TENSE: REGULAR VERBS

I worked hard in my English class.

REGULAR VERBS We add -ed at the end of the verb:

Talk → talked

- If the verb ends in “e”, we only add -d:

Live → lived

- When the verb ends in vowel + consonant we double the last consonant:

Stop → stopped

- When the verb ends in consonant + y, we change the “y” and add -ied:

Study → studied

IRREGULAR VERBS

Affirmative:

Irregular past verb forms must be learned because they don’t follow any rule:

* Go went

* Come came

* Buy bought

* Drink drank

* Eat ate

* Find found

* See saw I went to El Tajín last Summer holidays.

IRREGULAR VERBS

Negative.Use did not or didn’t + bare infinitive to make the past simple tense negative.

I didn’t play football last week.

I didn’t cook the dinner last night.

Interrogative:

We use did + subject + a bare infinitive of the verb to make the past simple interrogative.

- Did you go on holidays last summer?

- - Did you take any Language course the last semester?

REGULAR AND IRREGULAR VERBS