Simple Past tense

1.    Simple past tense

The simple past
is used to talk about a completed action in a time before
now. Duration is not important. The time of the action can be
in the recent past or the distant past.

·         John Cabot sailed to America in 1498.

·         My father died last year.

·         He lived in Fiji in 1976.

·         We crossed the Channel yesterday.

You always use the simple past when you say when something happened,
so it is associated with certain past time expressions

Examples:

·         frequency:often,sometimes, always;

·         a definite point in time:last week, when I was a child, yesterday, six weeks ago.

·         an indefinite point in time:the other day, ages ago, a long time ago etc.

Past tense often uses adverbial of time, example :

Yesterday	2 days ago
Last week	The other day
Last year	In 1982, etc

The formula of  simple past tense :

Verbal sentence: (+) = S + V2 + O Example : he went to Bali Yesteday (-) = S + did + not + V1 + O Example : he did not go to Bali Yesterday (?) = did + S + V1 + O Example : did he go to Bali Yesterday? Nominal sentence : (+) = S + was/ were + complement Example : I was successful yesterday (-) = S+ was/ were + complement Example : I was not successful yesterday (?) = was/ were + S + complement Example : was I successful yesterday?