Simple Past Tense (Past Simple)

A brief about simple past tense for UPSR students.

We use the Simple Past:
1. We use simple past – of be – to talk about fact about the past.
Tun Dr. Mahathir was the Prime Minister of Malaysia.

2. We use simple past – of be – with place and time.
We were at Singapore in December.

3. We use simple past – of be – with adjective.
It was hot yesterday.
The bus was late again this morning.

4. We use simple past to talk about action or situation in the past which is finished.
Ali phoned me last night. He wanted to ask me about school homework.

5. We also use simple past to talk about something that continued for a period of time, and ended in the past.
Last month, Abu stayed in Kuala Lumpur for five days.

We form Simple Past like this:-
Positive form of the regular past
A. Regular verbs by adding –ed to the verb:
work → worked help → helped open → opened
B. Verbs ending with –e:
hope → hoped like → liked
C. Verbs ending with a consonant and –y:
try → tried reply → replied
D. Verbs ending with vowel (a, e, o) and –y:
play → played enjoy → enjoyed
E. Most verbs ending with one vowel and one consonant:
plan → planned stop → stopped slim → slimmed

Positive form of the irregular past
A. come → came ring → rang win → won

Positive form of be verb
A. I / He / She / It was
B. You / We / They were

Negative form of the simple past - regular & irregular verb
(did not + infinitive):
She did not work. (√)
She did not worked. (x)
We didn’t go. (√)
We didn’t went. (x)

Negative form of the simple past - be verb
I / He / She / It was not
You / We / They / were not

Compare the positive (+) and negative (-) Past Simple:
(+) I played football. → (-) I did not play hockey.
(+) He saw you. → (-) He did not see us.
(+) Siti went to Rome. → (-) Siti didn’t go to London.

Question form of the simple past - regular & irregular verb
(did + subject + infinitive):
(+) Ali cleaned the car. → (?) Did he clean the car?
(+) The team went to London. → (?) Where did they go?

Question form of the simple past - be verb
Was I right?
Was he/she/it right?
Were we/they/you right?