Simple Past Tense: How to Use It,
With Examples
The simple past is a verb tense that is used to talk about things that
happened or existed before now. Imagine someone asks you what your
brother Wolfgang did while he was in town last weekend.
Wolfgang entered a hula hoop contest.
He won the silver medal.
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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 indicates that the action occurred at a certain time and then was
completed.
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.
He was at his best the whole time.
How to form the simple past
For regular verbs, add –ed to the root form of the verb (or just –d if the root
form 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 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 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?
Did people take lots of pictures?
