Basic English Grammar Course | Past Simple Tense | Learn and Practice

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.

In this first checkup, we'll take a look at

practice questions using the 'be' verb in the past simple tense.

Remember the 'be' verbs in the past simple tense are ‘was’ or ‘were’.

Let's take a look at the first sentence.

‘He __ at work earlier.’

The subject here is ‘we’.

So do we use ‘was’ or ‘were’?

The correct answer is ‘was’.

‘He was at work earlier.’

The next sentence says,

‘We _____ very happy yesterday.’

If the subject is ‘we’, remember the be verb is ‘were’.

‘We were very happy yesterday.’

Next, ‘My parents or they __ worried about me.’

If it's 'they', remember we have to say ‘were’.

‘My parents were worried about me.’

If I want to use the negative, I can also say ‘My parents weren't worried about me.’

And that's possible.

Now I want you to find the mistake in the next sentence.

‘We wasn't good students.’

We wasn't good students.

Can you figure out what's wrong?

The subject here is ‘we’, so we don't say ‘was not’.

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

‘We weren't good students,’ is the correct answer.

The next one says, ‘Were she a teacher?’

Now, this is a question so the be verb comes at the beginning.

That's correct, but the subject here is ‘she’.

Therefore, we need to start with ‘was’.

‘Was she a teacher?’

And finally,

‘They wasn't at school.’

The subject is ‘they’, so the answer is

‘They weren't at school.’

You can use the contraction ‘weren't’ or ‘were not’.

Let's move on to the next checkup.

Now, let's practice regular verbs in the past simple tense.

Take a look at the first sentence.

‘He ____ at home.’

The verb is ‘study’.

Remember, when changing a regular verb into

the past tense, we add ‘d’ or ‘ed’ to the end of the

verb.

However, there's a separate rule for words that end in ‘y’.

Such as, ‘study’.

We drop the ‘y’ and we add ‘ied’.

So the correct answer is,

‘He studied at home.’

The next sentence says, ‘We __ pencils.’

We want to use negative because it says ‘not use’.

Remember for the negative, we always use ‘did not’, no matter what the subject.

You can also use the contraction ‘didn't’.

Now, what do we do to the verb?

We keep it as ‘is’.

We do not change it.

‘We didn't’ or ‘We did not’ use pencils.

The next sentence says, ‘His friends or they walk to the gym.’

What's the past tense of ‘walk’?

We simply have to add ‘ed’ because it's a regular verb.

‘His friends walked to the gym.’

Now, find a mistake in the next sentence.

‘She didn't likes math.’

‘didn't’ is correct.

However, remember we keep the verb as ‘is’ in the base form.

So we don't say ‘likes’.

We say ‘like’.

‘She didn't like math.’

The next sentence says, ‘Did it rained this morning?’

Now this is a question.

In a question, it’s right to start the sentence with ‘Did’.

‘Did it rained?’

Do you notice the mistake?

Remember, we do not use the past tense form in the question.

We use the base form of the verb.

‘Did it rain this morning?’

And finally, ‘They not play the piano.’

The verb is an action verb.

So we need a ‘did’ in front of ‘not’.

‘They did not play the piano.’

Let's move on to the next checkup.

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

Take a look at the first sentence.

‘He __ to school.’

And the verb is ‘run’.

‘run’ is an irregular verb, so the past tense form is ‘ran’.

‘He ran to school.’

The next sentence says, ‘We __ flowers.’

We want to use the negative because here it says ‘not grow’.

Remember, no matter what the subject in the negative form,

we say ‘did not’

or ‘didn't’.

Then we keep the verb in its base form.

‘We did not grow’ or ‘We didn't grow flowers.’

The next sentence says, ‘Where __ you teach last year?’

This is a question.

Again, all we need to put is ‘did’.

‘Where did you teach last year?’

It doesn't matter what the subject is.

We always go with ‘did’.

Next, try to find the mistake in the next sentence.

‘He didn't sold newspapers.’

Remember, in the negative, ‘didn't’ is correct for whatever subject there is.

However, we need to keep the verb in its base form.

So the correct answer is, ‘He didn't sell newspapers.’

The next sentence says, ‘Did she sing a song?’

You'll notice it's a similar problem here.

‘sang’ is the irregular past tense form of ‘sing’.

But in a question, if it starts with ‘did’,

we use the base form.

‘Did she sing a song?’

And finally, ‘We taked it home.’

Does that sound right?

‘taked’ is not correct.

The past tense of ‘take’ is ‘took’.

‘We took it home.’

Great job, everyone.

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.