Past Simple
The simple past tense shows that you are talking about something that has already happened. Unlike the past continuous tense, which is used to talk about past events that happened over a period of time, the simple past tense emphasizes that the action is finished.
Forming the Past Simple
| Subject | Verb + d, ed, ied or irregular form (V2) | Rest of Sentence |
| I / He / She / It You / We / They | walked | to the shop yesterday |
| slept | late last Saturday |
Wolfgang admired the way the light glinted off his silver medal.
You can also use the simple past to talk about a past state of being, such as the way someone felt about something. This is often expressed with the simple past tense of the verb to be and an adjective, noun, or prepositional phrase.
Wolfgang was proud of his hula hoop victory.
The contest was the highlight of his week.
How to Formulate the Simple Past
For regular verbs, add -ed to the root form of the verb (or just -d if the root form already ends in an e):
Play→Played Type→Typed Listen→Listened Push→Pushed Love→Loved
For irregular verbs, things get more complicated. The simple past tense of some irregular verbs looks exactly like the root form:
Put→Put Cut→Cut Set→Set Cost→Cost Hit→Hit
For other irregular verbs, including the verb to be, the simple past forms are more erratic:
See→Saw Build→Built Go→Went Do→Did Rise→Rose Am/Is/Are→Was/Were
The good news is that verbs in the simple past tense (except for the verb to be) don’t need to agree in number with their subjects.
Wolfgang polished his medal. The other winners polished their medals too.
How to Make the Simple Past Negative
Fortunately, there is a formula for making simple past verbs negative, and it’s the same for both regular and irregular verbs (except for the verb to be). The formula is did not + [root form of verb]. You can also use the contraction didn’t instead of did not.
Wolfgang did not brag too much about his hula hoop skills. Wolfgang’s girlfriend didn’t see the contest.
For the verb to be, you don’t need the auxiliary did. When the subject of the sentence is singular, use was not or wasn’t. When the subject is plural, use were not or weren’t.
The third-place winner was not as happy as Wolfgang. The fourth-place winner wasn’t happy at all. The onlookers were not ready to leave after the contest ended. The contestants weren’t ready to leave either.
How to Ask a Question
The formula for asking a question in the simple past tense is did + [subject] + [root form of verb].
Did Wolfgang win the gold medal or the silver medal? Where did Wolfgang go to celebrate? Did the judges decide fairly, in your opinion?
When asking a question with the verb to be, you don’t need the auxiliary did. The formula is was/were + [subject].
Was Wolfgang in a good mood after the contest? Were people taking lots of pictures?
Wh-Questions in the Past Simple
Wh- questions are questions that require more information in their answers. Typical wh- words are what, where, when, why, who, how, how many, how much.
To create a wh-question, start with the wh-word, then add did (or didn’t for a negative question), then the subject (a person or thing that does the action), followed by the base form of the verb and only then add the rest of the sentence.
| Wh-word | auxiliary verb | subject | verb in base form | rest of sentence |
| What | did |
I / you / we / they he / she / it | sell | the house |
| Why | didn’t | rescue | me |
