The past is one of the most commonly used tenses in English. It is mainly used for narratives, that is for telling about things (real or imaginary) that have already happened. There are several difficulties with using the past tense.
1. Which past tense should I use? There are several choices - the past simple, the past continuous, and the past perfect. (You also have 'mood' - the subjunctive, and 'voice' - the passive, but we will deal with these later in Advanced.
2. A lot of things happened at different times - how do I organize the events? You can explain how something happened by using the different past tenses to explain what happened when.
3. Irregular past tenses are scary! Yes, they are. Fortunately there are some guides that can help.
This is the way of speaking about the past which is most often used. There are several forms of the past simple. Here we will look at positive statements, negative statements and questions.
Positive Statements: You use these to talk about something that happened in the past. For example: Mike went to the cinema last night. Here the verb is 'went'. This is a special form of the verb 'go' that is only used in positive statements about the past. All verbs in positive statements about the past have their own special form. Fortunately, for most verbs this form is made by putting '-ed' at the end of the infinitive form. For example with 'talk' we have 'talked'. However many of the most common verbs are irregular. We have seen that 'go/went' is an example of this.
Negative Statements: You use these to talk about something that did not happen in the past. For example: Mike did not go to the cinema last night. Here you can see that 'went' in the positive statement has become 'did not go' in the negative. Negative statements about the past do not use the special verb form but instead use 'did not' before the infinitive form of the verb.
(Hint This is very useful, because the 'affirmative' form - which we discuss in Advanced - can be used if you forget the irregular past tense verb. So if you have forgotten 'went' you can use a 'negative' without 'not' - 'Mike did go to the cinema last night.' This might sound strange to your listener, but it makes your meaning clear.)
Questions: The form of a past tense question is the same as a present tense question, except that you change the 'Question word' to the past tense form. (See Lesson Five for Questions). So 'Do you live in London?' (present tense) becomes 'Did you live in London?' (past tense), and 'Can you swim?' becomes 'Could you swim?' and so on. Negative questions are usually formed by putting 'not' after the question word, usually as a -n't suffix. For example: Didn't Mike go to the cinema last night? However, you can also leave 'not' before the main verb. For example: Did Mike not go to the cinema last night?
The past continuous does not have a special form of the verb in positive or negative statements. Instead the past continuous is always formed with the auxiliary 'was/were' and the present participle (one of the '-ing' forms). For example: Mike was going to the cinema when he met Sally. For a negative statement in the past continuous, we simply add 'not'. Mike was not going to the cinema when he met Sally.
This description has been about how to form the past continuous. When you should use the past continuous will be discussed on the next page.
The past perfect is used to say which of two actions in the past came first. It is formed from the auxiliary 'had' and the past participle. For example: Mike had bought his ticket online before he went to the cinema. Often the past participle is the same as the special past tense form (especially if the past form is a regular '-ed' ending) but sometimes it is different again. For example: 'look/looked/looked' but 'buy/bought/bought' and 'go/went/gone
Describing an event in the past: For this we usually use the simple past tense plus an implied or explicit 'time indicator'. ('Implied' means you can understand it even if it is not actually said, and 'explicit' is when it is said clearly.) For example: Mike went to the cinema last night. This is an explicit time indicator because 'last night' tells us exactly when this happened. Mike enjoyed the sunset. This is an implicit time indicator because we know the time was late afternoon, even though the sentence does not say this. Usually a past tense used this way describes the most recent time in the past this was possible. If another time is meant, you have to use an explicit time indicator. Mike enjoyed the sunset two days ago. The rule with the simple past is that you should use an explicit time indicator if the time of the event is not known. But if it is clear what time is meant, use the simple past without a time indicator. The simple past can describe events from the distant past -e.g. The Earth was formed four billion years ago - or very recently - e.g. I enjoyed that chocolate. Shall we have another?
Describing two events in the past that happened at the same time: Sometimes two events happen at once, or one event interrupts another. For example: Mike was crossing the street when he saw Sally. or Bill was sleeping when the phone woke him up. Here we can see that Mike continued crossing the street after he had seen Sally, but Bill stopped sleeping when his phone rang. To describe these two events that happened together, we use the past simple for one verb and the past continuous for the other. When we describe two actions in the past in this way, we use the the present continuous for the longer action (e.g. crossing the street took Mike forty seconds, but seeing Sally happened immediately, so we use the present continuous for 'cross'.) We also put the action that was interrupted into the continuous - so Bill 'was sleeping' until the phone call woke him up.
Note that the two parts of the sentence can come in any order: Mike was crossing the street when he saw Sally. or When he saw Sally, Mike was crossing the street. Because the grammar explains the how events happened, we do not need to rely on word order to explain them.
Describing which of two events in the past happened first: Sometimes it is clear which of two events in the past happened first, so we use the simple past to describe both. For example: Mike sat down and watched the movie. We usually sit to watch a movie, so we know which action happened first. Sometimes, however, this is not clear. Imagine Mary visits her sister Janet. Janet cooks dinner. Did Janet cook the dinner before or after Mary arrived? Using the past perfect lets us know which event happened first. Janet had cooked dinner when Mary arrived. Because the event in the past perfect happens before the event in the simple past, we can see that Janet cooked beforehand Janet cooked dinner when Mary had arrived. Here we see that Mary arrived and then Janet cooked dinner.
In the Elementary description of the past tense, we saw that regular '-ed' endings are pronounced 'id', 't' or 'ed'. Irregular verbs have their own pronunciation which has to be learned - for example 'read' with a hard 'a' is an infinitive, with a short 'a' (so it sounds like 'red') the word is a past simple or past participle. Remember also that just because you know how one verb is pronounced, it does not mean another with the same form has the same pronunciation, even with regular verbs - for example check the pronunciation of 'rounded' and 'wounded'.
In the exercises which follow, you can practice irregular verbs and other parts of the past tense which you have studied here. Click either the menu on the right or the blue triangle to go on.
If this explanation is too simple for you, look at the grammar of the past tense in the advanced section. On the other hand, you should read the grammar in the elementary section if this seems too difficult.
Lesson 1
Lesson 2
Lesson 3
Lesson 4
Lesson 5
Crime