Past Simple Tense – Rules

Simple Past / Past Simple Tense – Definition, Structure, Rules, Uses, Exercises, Examples, Tests and Quizzes

The four different types of past tense are: (1) Simple Past Tense (2) Past Continuous Tense (3) Past Perfect Tense (4) Past Perfect Continuous Tense.

Simple past tense is used to express past actions (completed action).

How do we make the Past Simple tense?

Positive	Negative	Interrogative	Negative Interrogative
Subject + Verb in the past form (or 2nd form)	Subject + Didn’t + Verb in the base form (or 1st form)	Did + Subject + Verb in the base form (or 1st form)	Didn’t + Subject + Verb in the base form (or 1st form)
You spoke English fluently.	You did not speak English fluently.	Did you speak English fluently.	Didn’t you speak English fluently.
He had his dinner.	He did not have his dinner.	Did he have his dinner?	Didn’t he have his dinner?

Important:

How is 2nd form or past form of the verb is formed?

Here are a few basic rules we must remember about the irregular past tense.

1.	A regular verb always ends in -ed (1st form of the verb + ed/d). Example: play (V1 base) – played (V2 past) – played (V3 past participle)
2.	Irregular verbs don’t follow the above pattern of ending with -ed. They almost never end in -ed. A vowel or pair of vowels of the regular verb turn different from the base form. Example: begin – began – begun All three forms of the verb are different in the above case.
3.	Sometimes the past tense / 2nd form and 3rd form / past participle of the verbs are the same. Example: lose – lost – lost | keep – kept – kept
4.	Sometimes we see base and the past tense are the same, but the past participle form appears different. Example: beat – beat – beaten
5.	Sometimes the base form, past form, and past participle form are all the same. Example: put – put – put | hurt – hurt – hurt

List of Irregular verbs is a bit lengthy.

Base (1st form)	Past (2nd form)	Past Participle (3rd form)
be	was/were	been
begin	began	begun
begin	began	begun
come	came	come
cost	cost	cost
cut	cut	cut
drive	drove	driven
drive	drove	driven
eat	ate	eaten
eat	ate	eaten
freeze	froze	frozen
freeze	froze	frozen
lay	laid	laid
put	put	put
run	ran	run
run	ran	run
run	ran	run
set	set	set
sleep	slept	slept
sleep	slept	slept