Simple Past Tense Definition, Affirmative, Negative and Interrogative Sentences

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Simple Past Tense

Simple Past Tense, which is a Tense that expresses previously lived events or situations, is one of the Tense used basically in English. This Tense, which should be learned by anyone who wants to speak English, expresses that an event started and ended in the past.

How to Make Simple Past Tense?

The Simple Past Tense, which has certain patterns, has the subject-verb-object sequence of English. When using the Simple Past Tense, you should use the verbs in their second form, not their nominative and first form. The second forms of the verbs consist of two groups, regular and irregular, and the suffix “-ed” is added to the nominative form of the verbs in regular verbs. Irregular verbs have their own special structures and these verbs should be memorized.

With the Simple Past Tense, you can construct verb phrases as we explained. However, if what you want is to make a noun phrase using the Simple Past Tense, you need to learn to use the auxiliary verbs was or were in order to do this. All you need to learn about this is that you should use were for You, We, and They subjects and was for I, He, She, It.

An example for verb sentences: I couldn’t find anything to eat at home today, so I couldn’t eat.

An example for noun sentences: Alice was the prettiest girl in the class.

Simple Past Tense Grammar Rules

Affirmative Sentences: You can directly use the second form of the verb for the subjects I, You, We, They, He, She, and It. If you are going to make noun sentences, the auxiliary verb “were” for You, We, and They subjects; You should also use the auxiliary verb “was” for the subjects I, He, She, and It.

I wanted to kiss Julia on her cheek but I could not (couldn’t).
I wanted to go to the dentist but my dentist (he or she) was busy.
Abel passed the test because he studied hard.

Negative Sentences: If you are going to construct a negative Simple Past Tense sentence, it will be sufficient to add the suffix “not” to the auxiliary verb “were” or “was”. If you are making a verb sentence, you should add “did not (didn’t)” in front of the verb and use the verb in its original form.

It did not (didn’t) rain yesterday, the weather report (it) was not (wasn’t) correct.
Benjamin did not (didn’t) have time to spend with his girlfriend.
Gregor wanted to learn Japanese badly but he did not (didn’t) have Money to assign to any course.

Interrogative Sentences: If you have used a noun sentence while making a question sentence, you should prefix the auxiliary verbs “was” and “were”. If you are using a verb phrase, your sentence should start with Did, followed by the subject, and then use the initial form of the verb.