THE PAST SIMPLE TENSE

The Past Simple Tense

I lived in Granada when I was young. I studied at University at that time. I studied every day and I also went out with my friends.

I lived with my friends Paco and Javi in a big and old flat. We enjoyed our life. Every weekend, we met lots of people in the disco. I remember I had a girlfriend called Margarita.

I finished my studies in 1995, but I didn’t start to work until 1997. I studied hard to be a Language teacher in a Secondary school. Life is not too bad now, but those days were fantastic!

Regular Verbs

The Past Simple Tense

REGULAR VERBS – SPELLING RULES

Verb ending in... How to make the Past Simple Examples 1. -e Add -D live > lived

2. Consonant +y Change y to i, then add -ED try > tried

3. Vowel + y Just add -ED play > played

4. A vowel + a cons Double the consonant, stop > stopped

(but NOT w or y) then add -ED

5. -l Double the consonant, travel> travelled

then add -ED 6. Two syllable verbs with Double the consonant, prefer> preferred

stress on the last syllable then add –ED permit> permitted

7. Anything else Add -ED boil > boiled including w show > showed

The Past Simple Tense

There are three different kinds of past ending pronunciation in English:

1.VOICELESS SOUND (except written t) verbs preceded by a voiceless consonant [p, k, f, ʃ, ʧ, s, θ] are pronounced /t/:

looked, worked, talked, liked passed, stopped, crashed, laughed, watched

2.VOICED SOUND (except written d) preceded by a voiced consonant [b, g, v, ʒ, ʤ, z, ð, l, m, n] or a vowel are pronounced /d/:

opened, learned, realized, changed rolled, arrived, lived, played, tried studied, married

3. WORDS ENDING IN DENTAL CONSONANTS LIKE D and T: implies /id/ pronunciation

decided, wanted, hated interested, needed, started  

The Past Simple Tense

IRREGULAR VERBS

Irregular verbs are called like that because they form the simple past and the past participle irregularly, that is to say, with no rules, like the regular verbs that take the –ed ending. You have to learn them by heart (de memoria).

There are more than 600 hundred irregular verbs, although about 200 hundred are the most common.

Some of them have the same form for the infinitive, past and past participle (put – put – put), others have two equal (stand – stood – stood) and others have three different forms (write – wrote – written).

The Past Simple Tense

Affirmative: (+)REGULAR VERBSSUBJECT + VERB – ED

football yesterday.

IRREGULAR VERBSSUBJECT + IRREGULAR VERB

to the cinema last night.

some clothes in the boutique.

The Past Simple Tense

playedI

He went

Mary bought

Negative: (-)REGULAR VERBSSUBJECT + DID + NOT (DIDN’T) + VERB

football yesterday.

IRREGULAR VERBSSUBJECT + IRREGULAR VERB

to the cinema last night.

some clothes in the boutique.

The Past Simple Tense

didn’t playI

He didn’t go

Mary didn’t buy

Interrogative: (?)The interrogative structure in the Past Simple follows this pattern:Without an interrogative pronoun:

DID + SUBJECT + VERB + OBJECT OR COMPLEMENTS

With an interrogative pronoun:

WH + DID + SUBJECT + VERB + (COMPLEMENTS)? Where did you go (last night) ?

WH- PRONOUNS AND INTERROGATIVE PARTICLES:who, what , when, where, why, how, how much, how many, how often, what time, etc …

The Past Simple Tense

Did you play football yesterday?

The Past Simple Tense

TIME EXPRESSIONS

yesterday

last night / Sunday/ week / month / year

two days / weeks / months ago

on Wednesday / on 4th of July

in 2004 / in August

when I was young / when they saw her

then

The Past Simple Tense

USES

The Past Simple is used when:

• The action or sequence of actions happened in the past.Paul and Mary lived and studied in the same city.

• The action/event is completed /finished at the time of speaking.Marco arrived in Madrid yesterday.

• The time or/and place is stated or understood. Spain won the football world cup of South Africa in 2010.

• The length of the event/action is not important. I went out with my friends last weekend.