Thursday 15 February 2012

Today,we have another two grammar presentations like yesterday. Iffah's group will explain to us about Simple Past Tense and Jihan's group on Past Continuous Tense.

SIMPLE PAST TENSE

The simple past tense is sometimes called the preterite tense. We can use several tenses to talk about the past, but the simple past tense is the one we use most often.

To make the simple past tense, we use:
past form only
or
auxiliary did + base form

Here you can see examples of the past form and base form for irregular verbs and regular verbs:

	V1 base	V2 past	V3 past participle
regular verb	work explode like	worked exploded liked	worked exploded liked	The past form for all regular verbs ends in -ed.
irregular verb	go see sing	went saw sang	gone seen sung	The past form for irregular verbs is variable. You need to learn it by heart.
			You do not need the past participle form to make the simple past tense. It is shown here for completeness only.

The structure for positive sentences in the simple past tense is:

subject + main verb past
The structure for negative sentences in the simple past tense is:
subject + auxiliary verb + not + main verb
The structure for question sentences in the simple past tense is:
auxiliary verb + subject + main verb


The auxiliary verb did is not conjugated. It is the same for all persons (I did, you did, he did etc). And the base form and past form do not change. Look at these examples with the main verbs go andwork:

	subject	auxiliary verb		main verb
+	I			went	to school.
	You			worked	very hard.
-	She	did	not	go	with me.
	We	did	not	work	yesterday.
?	Did	you		go	to London?
	Did	they		work	at home?

Exception! The verb to be is different. We conjugate the verb to be (I was, you were, he/she/it was, we were, they were); and we do not use an auxiliary for negative and question sentences. To make a question, we exchange the subject and verb. Look at these examples:

	subject	main verb
+	I, he/she/it	was		here.
	You, we, they	were		in London.
-	I, he/she/it	was	not	there.
	You, we, they	were	not	happy.
?	Was	I, he/she/it		right?
	Were	you, we, they		late?

PAST CONTINUOUS TENSE

The past continuous tense is an important tense in English. We use it to say what we were in the middle of doing at a particular moment in the past.

The structure of the past continuous tense is:

subject	+	auxiliary verb BE	+	main verb
		conjugated in simple past tense		present participle
		was were		base + ing

For negative sentences in the past continuous tense, we insert not between the auxiliary verb and main verb. For question sentences, we exchange the subject and auxiliary verb. Look at these example sentences with the past continuous tense:

	subject	auxiliary verb		main verb
+	I	was		watching	TV.
+	You	were		working	hard.
-	He, she, it	was	not	helping	Mary.
-	We	were	not	joking.
?	Were	you		being	silly?
?	Were	they		playing	football?

YOU CAN KNOW HOW WE CAN USE PAST CONTINUOUS TENSE IN THIS LINKhttp://www.englishclub.com/grammar/verb-tenses_past-continuous_u.htm