Teacher Kathy's Corner: Simple Past Tense

Friday, December 16, 2022

Simple Past Tense

The simple past is a verb tense that is used to talk about things that happened or existed before now.

Past Time Expressions:

Last...week, month, year, weekend, winter..
Ago: 3 days ago, 2 summers ago, 6 weeks ago...
When + past: when I was a baby....

I. Regular Verbs

When ESL students first learn to form simple past tense verbs, they learn to add an "-ed" to the end of the base verb form. For example, "walk" becomes "walked.

Rule: Root Verb + -ed or -ied

Example:

Grandma cooked a delicious dinner last night. (root Verb: cook)

She studied English last Thursday. (root Verb: study)

A. Pronunciation: The final e in ‑ed is generally silent:

listened -> /lisnd/
watched -> /wacht/

BUT:

visited -> /vIzIted/

1. "ed" ending as a "T (asked, cooked, dressed)

2. "-ed" ending as "D " (agreed, called)

Tongue Twister:

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,

How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?

II. Irregular Verbs

Irregular verbs are verbs that don't take on the regular –d, -ed, or -ied. The top 10 irregular verbs in English are: see, say, go, come, know, get, give, become, find, and think. (Top 50)

Examples:

They saw the biggest Christmas tree yesterday at the mall.

The teacher said our homework is due on Friday.

We went shopping last weekend.

I came over your house last summer.