Simple Past

1. When to use the Simple past

Rule: The simple past is used to talk about a completed action in a time before now.

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

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

2. How to form the Simple Past

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

Irregular verbs: see list of verbs

Affirmative

• I was in Japan last year
• She had a headache yesterday.
• 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”.

Simple past, regular verbs

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

Examples: Simple past, irregular verbs

• List of main irregular verbs in English

to go

to give

to come