Simple Past Tense

Simple Past Tense

Affirmative form

singular

I/you/he/she/it worked

plural

we/you/they worked

Simple Past Tense

• Regular past always ends in –ed:

1. arrive/arrived (phone/phoned, smile/smiled; agree, lie, die)

2. wait/waited (ask/asked, clean/cleaned, follow/followed)

3. stop/stopped (rub/rubbed)

Simple Past Tense

• Occur/occurred (prefer/preffered, refer/referred)*AmE traveled, BrE travelled

• Cry/cried (carry/carried, try/tried, *but play/played)

Simple Past Tense

Negative form

singular

I/you/he/she/it did not work

plural

we/you/they did not work

Simple Past Tense

Interrogative form

singular

did I/you/he/she/it work

plural

did we/you/they work

Simple Past TenseUSE

• Events, actions or situations which occured in the past and are now finished. They may have happened recently or in the distant past.

e.g. The first modern Olympic Games was in 1896.

• A time reference must be given or must be understood from the context.

e.g. I saw Fred this morning.

Simple Past TenseUSE

• To describe past habits (like ‘used to’)

e.g. I smoked 40 cigarettes a day.

• To describe sth that happened a very short time ago.

e.g. Who left the door open?

• For polite inquires. Particularly asking for favours:

e.g. I wondered if you could give me a lift.

Simple Past Tense

• Adverbials: yesterday, last summer/year, combinations with ago (ago = back from now)

e.g. I saw John 3 months ago.

Simple Past Tense

• Some adverbs are used with past tenses, but with some other tenses too:

I always liked Gloria.

I often saw her in Rome.

Did you ever meet Sonia?

I never met Sonia.

We left at 4 o’clock/on Tuesday.

I saw him as recently as last week.