English The Simple Past Tense

The simple past tense is the one-word past tense of verbs in English. This module looks at regular and irregular verbs in the simple past. To form the past tense with regular verbs we use the base form of the verb and add the ending “-ed”.

We cannot use the ending “-ed” with irregular verbs. They follow a different conjugation table.

Examples:

eat (ate), begin (began), break (broke), buy (bought), drive (drove), go (went), know (knew), leave (left), make (made)

I ate a hamburger yesterday.
He drove home last night.
We went to the game last week.
She knew him from earlier.
I left after lunch.
You made a mistake.

The Verb “to be” 

To form the past tense of “to be”, we use “was” and “were”.

Examples:
I was happy.
You were honest.
He was funny.

To form the past tense of “to be” in the negative, we simply add “not”.

Examples:
I was not happy.
You were not honest.
He was not funny.

Questions with “was” and “were”:

Question: Was I happy?      Answer: Yes, I was.
Question: Was he honest?  Answer: No, he was not.
Question: Were they late?  Answer: Yes, they were.

Simple Past with “do”

To form a negative, or to ask and answer questions in the Past Tense we need to use “to do” + a verb in the infinitive.

Negative:

Questions:

Short Answers:

Questions with “Wh-” question words: 

Simple Past Negative Examples

• I didn’t go to school last night.
• You didn’t understand.
• She didn’t eat dinner yesterday.
• He didn’t go to work.
• We didn’t have fun last night.
• They didn’t call you.

Past Simple Question Examples

• Did you eat dinner?
• Did he go to work?
• Did he have lunch?
• When did they go on vacation?