The Simple Past Tense — English 4th Year Middle School

Learning Objective

Learn how to form and use the simple past tense to talk about completed actions in the past.

Introduction

The simple past tense is used to talk about actions that started and finished in the past. It is often used with time expressions like: yesterday, last week, last month, last year, two days ago, in 2020, etc.

Formation

Regular Verbs: Add -ed to the base form of the verb.

• walk → walked, play → played, study → studied, stop → stopped

Spelling Rules:

• If the verb ends in -e, add only -d: live → lived, like → liked
• If the verb ends in a consonant + -y, change -y to -ied: study → studied, cry → cried
• If the verb ends in CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant), double the last consonant: stop → stopped, plan → planned

Irregular Verbs: Some verbs have special past forms that you need to memorize.

• go → went, eat → ate, see → saw, have → had, do → did, make → made, buy → bought, take → took, write → wrote, read → read (pronounced “red”)

Negative Form

Use did not (didn’t) + base form of the verb:

• I did not (didn’t) go to school yesterday.
• She didn’t eat breakfast this morning.

Question Form

Use Did + subject + base form of the verb:

• Did you play football yesterday? Yes, I did. / No, I didn’t.
• Did she visit her grandmother last weekend? Yes, she did.

Examples

Yesterday, I walked to school. I met my friend Ahmed there. We studied English together. After school, I went home and ate lunch. I did my homework in the evening.

Exercises

Exercise 1: Write the past tense of these verbs.
1. play → … 2. go → … 3. study → … 4. eat → … 5. stop → …

Exercise 2: Complete the sentences with the simple past.
1. I (visit) … my grandmother last Friday.
2. They (not/watch) … TV yesterday.
3. (you/see) … the new film?
4. She (buy) … a new dress last week.

Homework

Write 5 sentences about what you did last weekend. Use at least 2 irregular verbs and 3 regular verbs.