Grammar Past Simple

1. Past Simple by Gloria Callejas Barrera is licensed under a Creative Commons
Reconocimiento-NoComercial-SinObraDerivada 4.0 Internacional License.

2. WHEN WE USE PAST SIMPLE:
 To talk about actions that happened at a specific
time in the past. You use a time expression.
(yesterday, last month.)
 It can be used to describe events that happened
over a period of time in the past.
 It is also used to talk about habitual or repeated
actions that took place in the past.

3. TIME EXPRESSIONS
* Yesterday, last week, last month, last
year, last time, … ago, in 1994,etc.
We cooked sushi 2 years
ago.

4. PAST SIMPLE TENSE: REGULAR
VERBS
* Affirmative:
The past tense of regular
verbs is formed by adding –d
or –ed to the verb.
I worked hard in my English
class.

5. REGULAR VERBS
 We add -ed at the end of the verb:
Talk → talked
 - If the verb ends in “e”, we only add -d:
Live → lived
 - When the verb ends in vowel + consonant we
double the last consonant:
Stop → stopped
 - When the verb ends in consonant + y, we change
the “y” and add -ied:
Study → studied

6. IRREGULAR VERBS
Affirmative:
Irregular past verb forms must be learned because they
don’t follow any rule:
* Go went
* Come came
* Buy bought
* Drink drank
* Eat ate
* Find found
* See saw I went to El Tajín last Summer holidays.

7. IRREGULAR VERBS
Negative.
Use did not or didn’t + bare infinitive to
make the past simple tense negative.
I didn’t play football last week.
I didn’t cook the dinner last
night.

8. REGULAR AND IRREGULAR VERBS
Interrogative:
We use did + subject + a bare infinitive of the
verb to make the past simple interrogative.
- Did you go on holidays last
summer?
- - Did you take any
Language course the last
semester?