How to ask questions in the PAST SIMPLE tense

Ready to master the most used tense in English conversations? In this easy grammar lesson you'll learn to ask questions in the past simple tense. We use this tense more than others because when we have a conversation or tell a story, we are usually talking about something that happened in the past. Unfortunately, many English learners make simple mistakes when they ask questions in the past simple tense. Watch this video for a clear explanation of all the rules you need to follow. Then we'll do some exercises together so you can practice changing statements into questions. In this lesson, I also mention irregular verbs. You can view online, download, or print a list of the most common irregular verbs in English at engvid.com/english-resource/irregular-verbs/

Take the quiz on this lesson here: engvid.com/how-to-ask-questions-in-the-past-sim…

TRANSCRIPT

Hi. I'm Rebecca from engVid. If you're a beginner or intermediate level student, this is a really important lesson for you, and that's because we're going to focus on the past simple tense, and specifically on making questions or forming questions in the past simple tense.

Now, why are these two areas specifically a little bit more challenging for students? For two reasons. First of all, when we're talking about the past tense, it's a little bit more challenging because we have to deal with regular verbs and irregular verbs, and when we're talking about questions it's a little bit harder because we have to add some words when we form a question and we have to change other words. All right? And all of this we have to do quite a lot when we speak in English, because most of the time when you speak in English or when you speak probably in any language, we tend to talk more about the past than about anything else. So, certainly, when we speak in English, we use this tense very, very often. Okay? So, let's have a look at exactly how to make these changes so that you can ask questions in the past simple tense very easily. Okay.

So, first of all, let's look at the sentence. When we form a sentence using a regular verb in the past, so what we do is we take the base verb, which in this first case is "work", and we add "ed" or "d". Okay? If the verb already ends in "e", like "dance", then we just add a "d"; and if not, we add "ed". So: "He worked", right? "He worked", "work" becomes "worked". But what happens when we need to make the question? Two things. First, you have to add this extra word: "Did". Without that, your question, I guarantee you, will be wrong. It might be casual, it might be informal, but it will grammatically be incorrect. So we need that word "Did" to form the question, and then we have to make another change. We have to add this: "Did he work?" So what happened? Here, when we had the sentence, we had to write "ed", and we said: "He worked." But when we come back to the question, we are coming back to the base form off the verb, so we do not say: "Did he worked?" We just say: "Did he work?" All right? So try to get the rhythm of that. And I'll try to repeat it for you, too, which you can then listen to and repeat after me. So, for example: "He worked.", "Did he work?", "She played.", "Did she play?", "They visited.", "Did they visit?" All right? You see? In each case, we have come back to the base form of the verb. So, do not say: "Did he worked?" Don't say: "He worked?" Try to use the entire expression: "Did he work?", "Did she play?", "Did they visit?" Okay? That's with regular verbs.

Now, what happens when we have irregular verbs? Well, you have to learn a little bit more. First, you have to learn: What is the past tense form to use with those irregular verbs? So, for example, in this one, the verb itself is the verb "go". "I go." Or let's say: "He goes." But in the past, you have to know that the past tense form of "go" is "went". All right? How do you know that? Well, you just have to learn it. Okay? There's no other way. There's a list of irregular verbs, and then you have to learn them by heart, you probably know many of them because you hear them a lot, but otherwise, you have to learn them. There's not much choice, there. Okay?

So in the past: "He went." How do we make that into a question, and what happens? The same thing that happened up here with the regular verbs. So: "He went." becomes: "Did he go?" All right? So let's see. "He went to the store." When we ask the question, we say: "Did he go to the store?" All right? So, again, we had to add the word "did", and we have to come back to the base form of the verb, which in this case was "go". All right?