What is the past tense ?
Is used to express about action or event occurred completely in the past a while ago. When we refer to the past, both the recent past or the distance past there is only the simple past formula to express .
The simple past tense is an essential tense used in English to express something that has happened in the past, as in the rest of tenses its characterized by own composition method, uses and also words associated with its existence.
And in this lesson we will learn more about the past tense with illustrative examples .
How the simple past tense is formulated ?
Regular verbs in the past ( Affirmation – Negative – Questioning )
| I and my friends visited Mike in hospital Ali played football yesterday She traveled to France by plane |
Verb + ed |
Affirmation |
|---|---|---|
| Salma did not help her sister in cooking Sandy didn't hear what her mother said |
Did not + infinitive |
Negative |
| Did you visit your grandpa yesterday ? Did she study her lesson ? Did Ahmed clean his hands after eating ? |
Did + Subject + infinitive |
Questioning |
Irregular verbs in the simple past :
There is a group of verbs in English which not added ( ed ) in the past as in regular verbs but its shape changes and it is called ( Irregular verbs ) these verbs have no fixed rule.
For examples :
✓ Eat → ate
✓ Go → went
✓ Buy → bought
✓ See → saw
✔ I went to my friend samy last Friday
✔ I saw this movie with my sister last year
✔ I bought the Yellow dress from this shop Two days ago
Cases of using the simple past :
1-The simple past uses when we want to speak about event that has been completed in the past for example :
✔ I went to the park last night with my cousin
2- it's also used to express the chain of events that have all occurred in the past
Example :
✔ She came back from school and ate her food and then started her homework
3-Among the uses of this tense is the expression of facts in the past ( both nouns – adjectives )
For example:
✔ The pigeon was a plane in the sky
Words associated with the simple past :
Words associated with the simple past tense are words indicate things that happen a while ago but it's not established rule so we can't depend on them to determine the tense of the sentence but it is better to identify it
( ago – last year .month. day – one day – yesterday )
For examples :
✔ Sandy phoned her father yesterday
✔ I called you three days ago
✔ They went to cinema last month
And that's way we got to know the simple past tense in terms of usage and composition method and we go to the end of our lesson today .