Saturday, 30 March 2013

Grammar - Simple Past Tense



Introduction:
The meaning of past is “earlier than the present time”. Thus Past is a tense used to express any action which took place earlier & no longer exists.  

Simple Past Tense is used to talk about a finished action which has no relation to the present.
In simple past tense, past form of verb is used. On the basis of their Past form, verbs can be categorised in two  - Regular Verbs & Irregular Verbs.

Regular Verbs – The verbs whose past form is formed by adding the alphabets “d” and “ed” at their end, are called as Regular Verbs. 

Example: play. Its past form is played. Some more examples of regular verbs are walk, talk, look etc.
Irregular Verbs – The verbs whose past form is not formed by adding the alphabets “d” and “ed” at their end, are called as Irregular Verbs.

Example: see, the past form of see is seen. Some more examples are do, give, sleep etc.

Sentence Structure in Simple Past Tense:

a) Positive or Affirmative Sentence:
Subject              Verb in past form           rest of the sentence
I                                   looked                          at her.
We                                went                            to the market.
Rohan                            slept                            early.

b) Negative Sentence – did not (didn’t) is used to make negative sentences
Subject did not(didn’t)                Verb in base form                      Rest of the sentence
I                             didn’t                                    look                                                       at her.
We                         didn’t                                    go                                                           to the market.
Rohan                    didn’t                                    sleep                                                       early.

c) Questions :
Question Word                     Auxiliary verb            subject                   Verb            Rest of the sentence
Did                                                                        you                          go              to the market?
When                                    did                            you                          go              to the market?

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