Hala’s learning book

Finished actions, states or habits in the past.
1: We use it with finished actions, states or habits in the past when we have a finished time word (yesterday, last week, at 2 o’clock, in 2003).

• I went to the cinema yesterday.
• We spent a lot of time in Japan in 2007.

2: We use it with finished actions, states or habits in the past when we know from general knowledge that the time period has finished. This includes when the person we are talking about is dead.

• Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa.
• The Vikings invaded Britain.

3: We use it with finished actions, states or habits in the past that we have introduced with the present perfect or another tense. This is sometimes called ‘details of news’.

Affirmative

In the case of regular verbs, the past simple is formed by adding -ed to the base form of the verb for all persons. Note the changes in spelling:

look » looked
stay » stayed
arrive » arrived (we only add -d if the verb ends in -e)
try » tried (a final -y changes to –i- after a consonant)
stop » stopped (we double the final consonant if the verb ends in consonant-vowel-consonant)