quincena 2

Lesson 1 - Pirates in History

The Past Tense

We use the Past Tense to talk about things that happened at a specific time in the past, now finished (yesterday, last summer, in 1786, etc.), but we may not mention the time:

We travelled to Japan last year. / She studied music.

We often use the Past tense to narrate stories:

There was a beautiful girl called Jenny, who lived in an old house. One day she woke up in the middle of the night because she heard a strange noise. She got up and went to the stairs. She quietly opened the door of her room and looked out...

Most verbs have regular past forms. Read here the spelling rules:

SPELLING RULES (regular past forms)

General rule: To make the past form of a regular verb you have to add -ed to the infinitive:

clean - cleaned / work - worked / paint - painted

But there are some exceptions to this rule:

1. Verbs ending in -e: you have to add only -d.

hate - hated / live - lived / hope - hoped

2. Verbs ending in -y: When the verb ends in a consonant + y, then we omit the y and add -ied.

study - studied / carry - carried / copy - copied

But if the verb ends in a vowel + y, you just add -ed: pray - prayed

3. Verbs ending in 1 vowel + 1 consonant: you double the last consonant and add -ed.

stop - stopped / hug - hugged / pat - patted

Now go to the next activity and check if you can distinguish regular verbs from irregular verbs.