Basic English Grammar - Past Tense Questions

Hi, I'm Rebecca from www.engvid.com and today we're going to have a grammar lesson on one

of the most common tenses where people make mistakes and that is the simple past tense.

I know there are a lot of tenses in English and it's not always easy to keep track of

them, but surprisingly the simple past tense is the tense that we use most often.

Usually we don't talk about what's happening now or what's going to happen in the future.

Usually we talk about what somebody did.

So you use the past tense much more often than you actually realize.

Now when you use the past tense, of course, there are three ways in which you'll be using

it, right?

You use it in a positive sentence, you use it in a negative sentence, and you use it

in a question.

So let's go over this because the focus of our lesson today is specifically on how to

ask questions in the past tense because what I have realized is that most students have

more difficulty with the questions than with any other aspect of English.

So let's focus just on that, okay?

So let's start with an example.

The example is he worked yesterday, right?

He worked yesterday, past tense sentence, correct?

It's a positive sentence.

Now let's take this sentence, he worked yesterday, and make it negative.

What would it be?

He didn't work yesterday, correct?

He didn't work yesterday, didn't, of course, is a contraction for the words did not.

Now let's come to what we are going to be studying today, which is the question form

of that sentence.

So what would be the question form?

If the positive sentence is he worked yesterday, the negative sentence is he didn't work yesterday,

the question will be this one, did he work yesterday, right?

Now what happens is that many students have a problem with the word did.

They either forget to use it or they are using it in the wrong way and then what happens

is that people start saying things like you worked yesterday, he worked yesterday, he

didn't work and all kinds of combinations, when actually all you have to do is remember

to use the word did, did is really important in the past tense because without did it's

really hard to ask any questions correctly.

So you need to use the word did, then you put the subject and last you put the verb

in the base form, the base form means the regular form of the verb, alright?

So we have did he work yesterday, right?

You can see that the verb has come back, we don't say did he worked, we don't say he worked,

we say did he work, alright?

Let's take another example.

So let's take another sentence first and run it through all three forms.

So the sentence was, let's take you went to the party yesterday, you went to the party

yesterday, how will you make it negative?

You didn't go to the party and the question is did you go, alright, did you go?

Let's take another one.

She finished her homework, negative, she didn't finish her homework, question, did she finish

her homework?

Ok?

Good.

Let's take another example.

They cleaned the room, they cleaned the room is the positive sentence, what's the negative

of that, they didn't clean the room and the question form will be did they clean the room,

right?

Did they clean, alright?

So that's the most important thing that you need to remember that it's really quite simple

to ask questions in the past tense, however if you are forgetting to use the word did

then most likely you are making a mistake.

So just put this word in and it will make things a lot easier.

Now the other thing I wanted to point out to you is that all the words you see here

can be used before this construction.

So you could say what did you do yesterday or where did you go yesterday, when did you

go, how did you go, who did you go with, how much did you pay, how long did you stay, alright?

So what do you see with all of these question words, you are putting them in this position

before did and the rest of the sentence stays exactly the same, the rest of the question.

So you can put these conveniently right before the word did.

The same with certain expressions that we use, what color, what color dress did you

buy, ok?

So what color did you buy or what size did you buy, what kind of book do you like, what

flavor ice cream did you buy, alright?

So you see that not only do the question words go before did but also these kind of expressions

like what color, what size, what flavor, ok?

And as long as you are doing that with the word did then you are asking questions correctly

in the past tense, alright?

I hope I made it a little bit easier for you to understand this but if you'd like to have

a little more practice which is always helpful, please visit our website www.engvid.com and

there you'll find a quiz where you can practice this a lot until you get it right, ok?

So all the best with that and bye for now, thanks for watching.