Learn Past Simple Tense English Grammar Course

Hi, everyone.

In this video, I will introduce the past simple English tense.

This grammar tense can help you explain a past general state, action, or habit.

There's a lot to learn and it's a very important tense, so keep watching.

In this video, I will talk about the 'be' verb in the past simple tense.

The 'be' verb in the past simple tense can be used to describe a past general state.

We use the 'be' verbs, ‘was’ and ‘were’ in this tense.

Take a look at the examples.

‘I was scared.’

‘James', or he 'was a teacher.’

‘She was sad.’

‘My dog was hungry.’

‘My dog’ can be ‘it’.

So for ‘I’, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’, we use the past tense 'be' verb, ‘was’.

However, for ‘you’, ‘we’ and ‘they’, we use ‘were’.

‘You were a good student.’

‘Your parents, or they were at the park.’ and ‘We were at home for two hours.’

In this last sentence, you see that the duration is emphasized.

Great job.

Let's move on.

Now I will talk about regular verbs in the past simple tense.

Take a look at these examples.

‘Liam played a game.’

Liam is a ‘he’,

but really it doesn't matter for regular verbs in the past simple tense.

Because no matter what the subject is, all we have to do is add ‘d’ or ‘ed’

to the end of the verb.

Here the verb is ‘play’, so I added ‘-ed’.

‘Liam played a game.’

‘The car, or it needed gas.’

The verb here is ‘need’.

For the past simple tense, I added ‘-ed’.

‘We watched a movie.’

Again, an ‘ed’ at the of ‘watch’.

‘You exercised for an hour.’

In this case, the verb is ‘exercise’.

I only need to add a ‘d’ to make it the past tense.

And finally, ‘They usually worked after school.’

The verb is ‘work’.

And I added an ‘ed’ to make it in the past tense.

The word ‘usually’ shows that this was a habit.

Remember, the past simple tense can be used to show past habits.

Let's move on.

Now, I'll talk about irregular verbs in the past simple tense.

Remember, for regular verbs, we only add ‘d’ or ‘ed’ to make a verb into the past tense.

However, for irregular verbs, we have to change the verb in a different way.

Let's take a look at some examples.

‘I ate with my friend.’

The verb here is ‘ate’.

‘ate’ is the past simple tense of ‘eat’.

The next example says, ‘Nara wrote a story.’

The verb is ‘write’.

And because it's irregular to change it into the past tense, we change the verb to ‘wrote’.

‘You often came home late.’

The verb here is ‘come’ and it's been changed to ‘came’.

You'll notice that we had the word ‘often’ to show a habit.

‘We bought a camera.’

The verb here is ‘buy’ and it's been changed to ‘bought’ to show the past simple tense.

And finally, ‘My parents sent me money for a year.’

Here the verb ‘sent’ is the past tense of ‘send’.

Here we also see ‘for a year’, this shows duration.

Let's move on.

Now I will talk about the negative form for the 'be' verb in the past simple tense.

Here are some examples.

The first one says, ‘I was not hungry.’

For the past simple tense, the negative 'be' verb

I f the subject is ‘I’, ‘he’, ‘she’ or ‘it’, we say ‘was not’.

For example, ‘I was not’ or ‘she was not’ or the contraction ‘wasn't’.

‘I wasn't’.

‘She wasn't’.

So let's look again, ‘I was not hungry.’

‘She wasn't home today.’

Now, if the subject is ‘you’, ‘we’ or ‘they’,

We say ‘were not’ or the contraction ‘weren't’.

‘The children, or they were not quiet.’

‘The children were not quiet.’

And then, ‘The dog', or it was not, or 'wasn't playful.’

Let's move on.

Now, let's talk about how to form the negative in the past simple tense for non-'be' verbs,

regular or irregular.

Here are some examples.

‘I did not like him.’

What we do for non-'be' verbs is simply put ‘did not’ after the subject.

And you'll notice that for the verb, we don't make any changes.

We keep the base verb.

‘He didn't catch the ball.’

Again, it's ‘he did not’, but here we used a contraction,

‘He didn't catch the ball.’

‘They didn't dance.’

Again, here's the contraction for ‘did not’.

And you'll notice that for the verb, we didn't change it at all.

Here's an irregular verb, and here's a regular verb, we keep them in the base form.

And finally, ‘We didn't think about that.’

Again, we simply say ‘did not’ or ‘didn't’.

Let's move on.

Now I will introduce two ways to form questions for the past simple tense.

Take a look at the first example.

‘He was angry.’

In this first sentence, we see the 'be' verb ‘was’.

It's quite easy.

All you have to do to turn this into a question is switch the order the first two words.

‘Was he angry?’

You can answer by saying ‘Yes, he was.’ or ‘No, he wasn't.’

The next sentence also has a 'be' verb.

‘They were comfortable.’

So again, switch the first two words.

‘Were they comfortable?’

The answers can be, ‘Yes, they were.’

or ‘No, they weren't.’

However, look at the third sentence.

‘Sam lived here.’

There is no 'be' verb in this sentence.

Instead, we see the action verb ‘lived’.

So what we do is no matter what the subject,

we start the question with ‘did’.

‘Did Sam live here?’

You'll notice that the verb no longer is in the past tense.

We use the base form of the verb.

‘Did Sam live here?’

You can say ‘Yes, he did.’

or ‘No, he didn't.’

The last sentence is similar.

‘They won the contest last year.’

The verb here is ‘won’, that's not a 'be' verb.

So again, we start the question with ‘did’ .

And then the subject ‘they’, we use the base form of the verb and that's ‘win’.

‘Did they win the contest last year?’

You can say, ‘Yes, they did.’

or ‘No, they didn't.’

Let's move on.

Now I'll introduce how to create an answer WH questions in the past simple tense.

Take a look at the board.

We have some WH words here.

‘What’ ‘When’

‘Where’ and ‘Why’

You'll notice that after each WH word comes the word ‘did’.

‘What did’ ‘When did’

‘Where did’ and ‘Why did’.

What comes after that the subject and then the base form of the verb.

So, let's take a look.

‘What did you do last night?’

‘What did you do last night?’

I can answer by saying something like, ‘I watched a movie.’

Or ‘I read a book.’

You'll notice that the answer is in the past simple tense.

‘When did you get home last night?’

‘I got home at 10 p.m.’

‘Where did they eat lunch?’

‘They ate lunch at home.’

Again, ‘ate’ is the past tense of ‘eat’.

Answer in the past simple tense.

And finally, ‘Why did the company hire him?’

‘The company hired him because he's a hard worker.’

Let's move on.

Wow, we learned a lot in this video.

Keep studying and reviewing the past simple tense.

It's an essential tense that will help you talk about the past.

Keep studying English and I'll see you in the next video.

Bye.