Learning English Grammar About The Past - General Statements

In daily conversation, talking about the past is done very frequently. Whenever you meet a friend, you always tell each other what you have been doing recently. Friends are always interested in each other so they want to know how you have been spending your time in the past.

Today's lesson is going to target past tense communication. This goes hand in hand with the last two lessons and changing a few words around can make a future or present tense sentence into a past tense sentence.

To begin, here are a couple of sentences that are common to say:

"I went to the airport yesterday."
"I met Bob last week."
"I was an hour late for my meeting."
"I went to the bus stop, but I was 30 seconds late. A person on the street told me the bus just went by."
"I completed that task this morning."

Speaking in the past requires past tense words. Let's take a closer examination for the sentences above.

Past Tense	Present Tense	Future Tense
Went	Go	Going to go
Met	Meet	Will meet
Was	Am	Going to be
Completed	Complete	Will complete

As you can see by some of the examples in the chart, some words change when speaking in the past tense.

Besides some words that change, many times a word with the letter 'd' or 'ed' at the end changes the word to past tense. Here are some examples:

"I was being polite so I opened the door for him."
"I stapled the papers together to keep them organized."
"The paper ripped on the bottom, so I taped them together."
"I switched the presents around because I found out Jane doesn't like red lipstick."
"I was very interested in the topic so I paid close attention."

The tricky part is to know when to add a 'd' to the end of a word to make it past tense. There are exceptions that can cause confusion, for example,

"I rode my bike to school." It would be incorrect to say, 'I rided...'
"I built the house from scratch." Incorrect way is to say, 'I builded...'
"I sat on the chair next to the emergency exit." Incorrect way is to say, 'sitted...'

So remember to use past tense words correctly or the other person might not understand what you are saying.

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Resource: http://www.talkenglish.com/LessonDetails.aspx?ALID=535