Simple Past Tense

  The Simple Past in English is very easy to form but can be a little confusing to use. This video and the notes below will help you understand how, when and where to use the Simple Past. Remember, that you can also do a lot of tests and exercises in English4Today as well as listen to podcasts in the English4Today Blog about the Simple Past.

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The Simple Past in English may look like a tense in your own language, but the meaning may be different.

1. Simple past,form
Regular verbs: base+ed
e.g. walked, showed, watched, played, smiled, stopped

Irregular verbs: see list in verbs

Simple Past: be, have, do:

Subject	Verb
	Be	Have	Do
I	was	had	did
You	were	had	did
He,she, it	was	had	did
We	were	had	did
You	were	had	did
They	were	had	did

Affirmative

1. I was in Japan last year
2. She had a headache yesterday.
3. We did our homework last night.

Negative and interrogative

Note:
For the negative and interrogative simple past form of “do”
as an ordinary verb, use the auxiliary “do”, e.g. We didn’t
do our homework last night. The negative of “have”
in the simple past is usually formed using the auxiliary “do”,
but sometimes by simply adding not or the contraction “n’t”.

The interrogative form of “have” in the simple past normally
uses the auxiliary “do”.

• They weren’t in Rio last summer.
• We hadn’t any money.
• We didn’t have time to visit the Eiffel Tower.
• We didn’t do our exercises this morning.
• Were they in Iceland last January?
• Did you have a bicycle when you were a boy?
• Did you do much climbing in Switzerland?

Simple past, regular verbs

Affirmative
Subject	verb + ed
I	washed
Negative
Subject	did not	infinitive without to
They	didn’t	visit …
Interrogative
Did	subject	infinitive without to
Did	she	arrive…?
Interrogative negative
Did not	subject	infinitive without to
Didn’t	you	like..?

Example:
to walk, simple past.

Affirmative	Negative	Interrogative
I walked	I didn’t walk	Did I walk?
You walked	You didn’t walk	Did you walk?
He,she,it walked	He didn’t walk	Did he walk?
We walked	We didn’t walk	Did we walk?
You walked	You didn’t walk	Did you walk?
They walked	They didn’t walk	Did they walk?

Note: For
the negative and interrogative form of all verbs in the simple
past, always use the auxiliary ‘did”.
Examples: Simple
past, irregular verbs

to go
a. He went to a club last night.
b. Did he go to the cinema last night?
c. He didn’t go to bed early last night.

to give
d. We gave her a doll for her birthday.
e. They didn’t give John their new address.
f. Did Barry give you my
passport?

to come
g. My parents came to visit me last July.
h. We didn’t come because it was raining.
i. Did he come to your party last week?
2. Simple past, function
The simple past
is used to talk about a completed action in a time before
now. Duration is not important. The time of the action can be
in the recent past or the distant past.

• John Cabot sailed to America in 1498.
• My father died last year.
• He lived in Fiji in 1976.
• We crossed the Channel yesterday.

You always use the simple past when you say when something happened,
so it is associated with certain past time expressions
Examples:

• frequency:often,sometimes, always;
• a definite point in time:last week, when I was a child, yesterday, six weeks ago.
• an indefinite point in time:the other day, ages ago, a long time ago etc.

Note: the word ago is a useful way of expressing the distance into
the past. It is placed after the period of time e.g.
a week ago, three years ago, a minute ago.

Examples:
a. Yesterday, I arrived in Geneva.
b. She finished her work at seven o’clock.
c. We saw a good film last week.
d. I went to the theatre last night.
e. She played the piano when she was a child.
f. He sent me a letter six months ago.
g. Peter left five minutes ago.