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    Simple Past Tense: Your Writing, at Its Best

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    Abdul Latiff Hashim
    The document discusses the simple past tense in English. It explains that the simple past tense is used to talk about actions or states that are completed in the past. It provides examples of forming the simple past of regular verbs with "-ed" and irregular verbs which have varying forms. It also covers how to make the simple past negative using "did/did not" or "was/were not" and how to ask questions in the simple past tense.

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    Simple Past Tense: Your Writing, at Its Best

    Uploaded by

    Abdul Latiff Hashim
    56 views6 pages
    The document discusses the simple past tense in English. It explains that the simple past tense is used to talk about actions or states that are completed in the past. It provides examples of forming the simple past of regular verbs with "-ed" and irregular verbs which have varying forms. It also covers how to make the simple past negative using "did/did not" or "was/were not" and how to ask questions in the simple past tense.

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    Simple Past Tense

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    The document discusses the simple past tense in English. It explains that the simple past tense is used to talk about actions or states that are completed in the past. It provides examples of forming the simple past of regular verbs with "-ed" and irregular verbs which have varying forms. It also covers how to make the simple past negative using "did/did not" or "was/were not" and how to ask questions in the simple past tense.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    56 views6 pages

    Simple Past Tense: Your Writing, at Its Best

    Uploaded by

    Abdul Latiff Hashim
    The document discusses the simple past tense in English. It explains that the simple past tense is used to talk about actions or states that are completed in the past. It provides examples of forming the simple past of regular verbs with "-ed" and irregular verbs which have varying forms. It also covers how to make the simple past negative using "did/did not" or "was/were not" and how to ask questions in the simple past tense.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 6

    Simple Past Tense

    Grammarly
    BASICS

    The simple past is a verb tense that is used to talk about things that happened or
    existed before now. Imagine someone asks what your brother Wolfgang did while
    he was in town last weekend.

    Wolfgang entered a hula hoop contest.

    He won the silver medal.

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    The simple past tense shows that you are talking about something that has already
    happened. Unlike the past continuous tense, which is used to talk about past events
    that happened over a period of time, the simple past tense emphasizes that the
    action is finished.
    Wolfgang admired the way the light glinted off his silver medal.

    You can also use the simple past to talk about a past state of being, such as the way
    someone felt about something. This is often expressed with the simple past tense of
    the verb to be and an adjective, noun, or prepositional phrase.

    Wolfgang was proud of his hula hoop victory.

    The contest was the highlight of his week.


    How to Formulate the Simple Past

    For regular verbs, add -ed to the root form of the verb (or just -d if the root form
    already ends in an e):

    Play→Played Type→Typed Listen→Listened Push→Pushed Love→Loved

    For irregular verbs, things get more complicated. The simple past tense of some
    irregular verbs looks exactly like the root form:

    Put→Put Cut→Cut Set→Set Cost→Cost Hit→Hit

    For other irregular verbs, including the verb to be, the simple past forms are more
    erratic:

    See→Saw Build→Built Go→Went Do→Did Rise→Rose Am/Is/Are→Was/Were

    The good news is that verbs in the simple past tense (except for the verb to be)
    don’t need to agree in number with their subjects.

    Wolfgang polished his medal. The other winners polished their medals too.

    How to Make the Simple Past Negative

    Fortunately, there is a formula for making simple past verbs negative, and it’s the
    same for both regular and irregular verbs (except for the verb to be). The formula
    is did not + [root form of verb]. You can also use the contraction didn’t instead
    of did not.

    Wolfgang did not brag too much about his hula hoop skills. Wolfgang’s girlfriend didn’t
    see the contest.
    For the verb to be, you don’t need the auxiliary did. When the subject of the
    sentence is singular, use was not or wasn’t. When the subject is plural, use were
    not or weren’t.

    The third-place winner was not as happy as Wolfgang. The fourth-place winner wasn’t happy


    at all. The onlookers were not ready to leave after the contest ended. The
    contestants weren’t ready to leave either.

    How to Ask a Question

    The formula for asking a question in the simple past tense is did + [subject] +
    [root form of verb].

    Did Wolfgang win the gold medal or the silver medal? Where did Wolfgang go to
    celebrate? Did the judges decide fairly, in your opinion?

    When asking a question with the verb to be, you don’t need the auxiliary did. The
    formula is was/were + [subject].

    Was Wolfgang in a good mood after the contest? Were people taking lots of pictures?

    Common Regular Verbs in the Past Tense


    Common Irregular Verbs in the Past Tense
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