Past Tenses

Past Simple

V3/ed

The Past Simple And Finished Actions.

The simple past is a tense in the English language used to talk about things that happened or existed before now. The past simple is used to talk about finished actions and it important to understand the idea of finished. For example: My best friend visited me in Dubai last week. Here the the action, which is visited, is the past simple which tells us that my best friend is not in Dubai anymore.

Other example of finished actions actions using the past simple

Yesterday, I bought a new computer.

I visited Spain in 2014.

The simple past tells us that you are talking about something that has already happened and emphasises that the action is finished.

Last week I was late for work so my boss gave me a warning..

The Past Simple To Talk about State.

We can also use the past simple to talk about a past state of being. When we talk about state of being, we are not talking about an action but about the way someone feels, usually physically. In order to express how we feel we need to usually need to use an adjective, a noun, prepositional phrase. Most of the time, we use the verb to be in the past simple simple to express how someone was feeling.

Peter was happy to hear from his parents.

Julie’s wedding was the best day day of her life.

Before I talk about how to make the past simple, you need to understand that in the past simple we have two types of verbs, regular and irregular. Regular verbs are easy enough to use as they follow the same pattern and end in -ed in the past simple. However, irregular can get very confusing and hard to learn for non-native English speakers as you have to learn the full list of irregular verbs in order to be able to use the past simple correctly.

How To Make The Past Simple

For regular verbs, add -ed to the base form of the verb (or just -d if the root form already ends in an e):

Stay→Stayed

Hate→Hated

Listen→Listened

Push→Pushed

Love→Loved

For irregular verbs, things are bit more difficult as I mentioned above because you need to remember all of them. And as their name suggests, irregular verbs do not always follow a pattern making them sometimes hard to remember.

Sometimes, the past simple of some irregular verbs looks exactly like the root form:

Put→Put

Cut→Cut

Set→Set

Cost→Cost

Hit→Hit

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For other irregular verbs, including the verb to be, the past simple form is a bit more difficult and less logical:

See→Saw

Build→Built

Go→Went

Do→Did

Rise→Rose

Be→Was/Were

One of the good things about the past simple, compared with other languages, is that the past simple version of the verb does not need to change according to the subject, it’s the same in with all subjects. For example:

I spoke / You spoke / He spoke / She spoke / We spoke / They spoke

As you can see above, the past simple does not change according to the subject. One exception to the this rule is the verb to be.

I was / He was / She was / It was

You were / They were

I was late for work and so were my friends.

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