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Activities in the Simple Past Tense

These were the weekend activities of Linda.

We use simple past to talk about something, activities, or actions that happened or we did in the past. The structure of this tense is indicated by the change of verb words. There are two kinds verbs i.e. regular and irregular verbs. For regular verbs, we usually add -ed at the back of the verbs to show that the action occurred in the past time. For irregular verbs, there are a long list of verbs whose forms change according to the change of tenses. English learners need to memorize them as there are no fixed rules to apply for them. Sometimes adverb of time such as yesterday, last week, or two months ago into a simple past sentence. Past sentences are also expressed using past continuous or past progressive and past tense of be.

Study the following samples:

Past Simple and Past Progressive

Study these sentences that are related to past tense activities:

• When I arrived at home, my sister was reading a novel in the living room and my mother was cooking in the kitchen.
• The phone rang when I was typing on the computer.
• They were swimming and wavesurfing at Kuta beach of Bali island when sharks came.

Simple past is used to describe an action that interrupts other actions that were progressing in the past. Learning English tenses can be confusing for students on the basic levels. Therefore, we advise them to slowly analyze the pattern of the sentences to determine whether they are past simple or past progressive.  We recommend students to buy English Grammar in Use by Raymond Murphy or Focus on Grammar (introductory level). These books will help them study the grammar and do a lot of exercises to increase their understanding.