It is used to tell the past events. We can find the use of simple past tense in some text genre, such as recount and narrative text. In writing the simple past tense sentences, we need to use Verb II as the predicate.
In Simple Present tense sentences, we may find the use of past adverb of time, such as: yesterday, ago and last.
We can find two different sentences in the simple past tense. They are:
Nominal Sentence
This sentence employs past form of ‘Be’ (was/were) as the predicate. It means that we don’t use any verb in this sentence. In the other words, we don’t find any activity in nominal sentences.
Formula: Subject + was/were + Noun/adjective
Example:
- I was a teacher.
- I was sad yesterday.
- Andy was very bad.
- They were clever students.
- Maradona and Van Basten were football players.
Singular Subject + was
Plural Subject + were
Verbal Sentence:
This Sentence uses ‘verb II’ as the predicate.
Formula:
Subject + Verb II*
Example:
- He played soccer yesterday.
- I cleaned my room two days ago.
- She bought the souvenir at Bali last week.
- I had breakfast this morning.
*Remember there are two kind of verbs, they are:
Regular verb: if it modifies into past, we need to add suffix –ed, for example:
V1 V2
Work Worked
Wash Washed
Learn Learned
Cook Cooked
Irregular verb: if it modifies into past, we can’t predict the changes, for example:
V1 V2
Bring Brought
Eat Ate
Go Went
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