I didn't play basketball.The Past Simple Tense is used to refer to actions that were completed in a time period before the present time.Remember:ĭidn't is the short form of did not. They talked on the phone for ten minutes.Events that were true for some time in the past I drove to work every day when I worked with that company.Christoph Columbus discovered America in 1492.Here are the main uses of the simple past. The simple past is used principally to describe events in the past, but it also has some other uses. I didn't like the food served at the wedding party last Saturday.The rule for the negative forms of the simple past is as follows: Did not/didn't + base form of the verbĮxamples: I, you, he, she, it, we, they did not/didn't play tennis last Sunday. Did you do the homework? The negative form of the simple past.To ask questions, the simple past takes the following form: AUXILARY VERB "DID" + SUBJECT + BASE FORM OF THE VERBĮxamples: Did I, you, he, she, it, we, they play tennis? watch the movie? write the report? do the homework? The interrogative form of the simple past I finished lunch and I did my homework.I played tennis with my friends yesterday.speak → spoke I, you, he, she, it, we, they played tennis last Sunday. Irregular verbs have various forms and have to be learned by heart. Irregular verbs ( e.g., write, do, speak, etc.):.Regular verbs ( e.g., watch, play, visit, etc.):Īdd -ed to the verb → watch ed, played, visit ed.The simple past takes the following forms in the affirmative: The infinitive The simple past be was/were come came do did drive drove give gave go went meet met run ran see saw speak spoke swim swam write wrote write wroteĪs you can see, we can not predict the simple past forms of these verbs. "Was" is the simple past of "to be" "wrote" is the simple past of "write". The simple past of irregular verbs has different forms.įor example, The verbs " was, wrote" are irregular past forms. Irregular verbsĪ verb whose conjugation does not follow the -ed rule above is called an irregular verb. The rule is the following:Įxamples: The infinitive The simple past live liv ed start start ed die di ed visit visit ed play play ed watch watch ed phone phon ed marry marri edįor the spelling of the -ed forms click here. Verb + edįor example, the verbs " lived, started, and died" are regular past forms. We form the simple past of regular verbs by adding -ed to the verb. lived, started, and died are regular past forms.The verbs " was, lived, started, wrote, died" are in the simple past tense. He started composing at the age of five years old and wrote more than 600 pieces of music. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an Austrian musician and composer. This page will present the simple past tense:īefore you continue the lesson read the following passage and try to see how the verbs are formed and used.
The simple past of regular verbs is formed by adding -ed to the bare infinitive (e.g., play → played, watch → watched, etc.) However, there are hundreds of irregular verbs with various forms (e.g., go => went, do => did, etc.) We generally use the simple past to describe past actions - events that happened before now. The simple past - also known as the past simple or the preterite - is the most basic form of the past tense.
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