Past Simple – Verbs, Verbs, Verbs

Past Simple is a tense in English which talks about actions that happened in the past.

We use these time expressions to describe a past action:

• yesterday
• last week / night / month / year
• a week / month / year ago
• in the past
• in 2006
• once

Just like the Present Simple tense, we use only one verb in a sentence when we refer to the past simple.

A verb may be one out of these three forms:

• Verb BE – Was / Were
• Regular Verbs – They get the addition of -ed
• Irregular verbs – They change form

Irregular Verbs

This group of verbs in the past change their form. They are also called – V2. You should learn their base form and their past form. Some of the verbs have a similar pattern:

break – broke      |     keep – kept

drive – drove       |    leave – left

——-

build – built         |    fly – flew

send – sent         |    know – knew

——-

In this activity you’ll spin the wheel and write the past form of the irregular verbs.

Regular Verbs

This group of verbs get an ‘-ed’ addition when they are used in the past simple, for example: wash – washed

Pay attention to the rules:

• After the letter ‘e’ add only ‘d’, for example: bake-baked
• CVC (1) – for one syllable verbs we double the last letter, for example: stop-stopped (CVC is always at the end of the verb)
• CVC (2) – for more than one syllable verbs we check if the stress is on the CVC and only then double the last letter, for example: prefer – preferred (stress is not on CVC – Don’t double the last letter), visit – visited (stress is not on CVC – Don’t double the last letter)
• Y Rule – after a consonant and y – Delete the y and add -ied, for example: try – tried, after a vowel and y – add only -ed, for example: stay – stayed

Watch the clip (from min. 2:00) and write 3 verbs for each of the rules. Add 3 more verbs to each list and add 3 verbs to the -ied column:

______-ed______|______-d_______|_____-ied_________

|                           |

|                           |

|                           |

Verb BE

In the Past we use ‘was’/’were’ as verb BE.

These pronouns go with ‘was’:

I was

He was

She was

It was

Theses pronouns go with ‘were’:

We were

You were

They were

Write the answers to the exercise in you notebook. Use was or were.

1. We ____________ at the picnic yesterday.
2. They ______________ at their friend’s house last night.
3. It ____________ hot at the beach last week.
4. We _______________ at the park a few days ago.
5. Paul ________________ in London a month ago.
6. Dave and Tim _________________ at the basketball game last week.
7. Kevin _________________ ten ten years old in 2003.
8. ________________ you on vacation last summer?
9. ________________ I late to class?
10. ________________ there a fire at the bank last week?

Use the QR code in the next page to check the answers.