Past Simple: regular & irregular verbs
Affirmative past forms.
We use the Past Simple to talk about actions that happened and finished in the past. For regular verbs, we add -ed to the base form: play → played, watch → watched. When the verb ends in -e, we just add -d: like → liked. When the verb ends in consonant + y, we change y to i and add -ed: study → studied. When the verb ends in one vowel + one consonant (and is one syllable), we double the consonant: stop → stopped. Many common verbs are irregular and have special past forms you must memorise: go → went, have → had, see → saw, make → made, come → came, get → got, eat → ate, buy → bought. We often use time markers with the Past Simple to show when something happened: yesterday, last week, last night, last summer, two days ago, in 2020. These time markers help us recognise that we need the Past Simple tense. For example: 'My family went to the park last Sunday and we ate sandwiches there.'
Rules
- 1Regular verbs: add -ed to the base form (play → played, watch → watched, like → liked).
- 2Spelling rule: consonant + y → drop y, add -ied (study → studied, carry → carried).
- 3Spelling rule: one vowel + one consonant at the end → double the consonant (stop → stopped, plan → planned).
- 4Irregular verbs have unique past forms that must be memorised (go → went, have → had, see → saw, make → made, come → came, get → got).
- 5Common past time markers: yesterday, last night/week/year, … ago, in [year] — these signal the Past Simple.
Practice
10 easy · 10 medium · 10 hard
10 random questions per test