Simple Past Tense

Simple Past Tense

What was your favorite childhood trip? Think about it, and how you would describe it to someone else. In order to do that, you need to use past tense. Specifically, you need simple past. Simple past tense is what you use when you are talking about something that has been completed. How long the action or activity lasted doesn't matter for simple past, as long as it is no longer happening. For example, you could use simple past to talk about how you walked to school every day (walked is simple past tense), or how one time you went to the movies (went is also simple past).

Uses

Simple past tense is used for both recent and distant past actions. Remember, it is that the activity you are talking about has been completed, and is not still going on. If you are describing when something happened, you'll use simple past. In other words, if you see certain past time expressions, such as 'yesterday' or 'last year', you know to use simple past. For example, the sentence 'Yesterday, I walked to school' uses simple past.

You can also use simple past if you are describing how often you used to do something. In this type of sentence, you will see words like 'often' or 'sometimes,' and it is the context, as well as the verb itself, that will let you know the sentence is in simple past.

For example, look at the following sentence: 'As a child, I sometimes walked to school.' The phrase 'as a child' helps let you know that the action took place in the past, as does the verb, 'walked.'

Rules

Regular Verbs

Regular verbs are verbs that follow a set pattern when you change their tense. If you want to change a regular verb to simple past tense, all you have to do is add -ed onto the end of the verb. Then walk (present) becomes walked (simple past), and wait (present) becomes waited (simple past).

Irregular Verbs

Not all verbs fit this pattern. Irregular verbs have different past tense forms. Since they don't follow any pattern, you just have to learn and memorize them. Some examples include bring (present), which becomes brought (simple past), run (present) and ran (simple past), and go (present) and went (simple past).

Practice Time!

Let's take a look at some examples. If you wanted to talk about your walk to the store yesterday, what would you say? You would say 'I walked to the store.'

Here are some additional examples, first in their present tense form, and then in simple past:

• 1a. I skip along the sidewalk.
• 1b. Sometimes I skipped along the sidewalk as a kid.
• 2a. I have three cats.
• 2b. Two years ago I had three cats.
• 3a. Alice talks really fast.
• 3b. When Alice was younger, she talked really fast.

Take a moment to look at how the meaning of the sentence changes. In 1a, 2a, and 3a, it is something that is currently happening. In 1b, 2b, and 3b, it is an action that used to happen, but doesn't happen anymore.

Take a look at the image. You can tell from how it looks, the fact that it is black and white, that it's old. The bus in it is no longer in use. To talk about how buses once looked, you would need simple past. For example: 'Buses had much bigger windows back then.'