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Understanding Past Tenses in English

Jun 1, 2025

Lecture Notes: Past Tenses in English

Introduction

  • Importance of learning English for opportunities like overseas scholarships.
  • Focus on learning past tenses in this session.

What is Past Tense?

  • Definition: Describes a past activity or state of being.
    • Examples:
      • "I wrote a letter to my friend." (past activity)
      • "I was hungry." (past state)

Types of Past Tense

Simple Past Tense

  • Purpose: Describes completed activities that started and ended in the past.
  • When to Use:
    1. Explaining past events or actions completed in the past.
    2. Describing past habits or repeated events.
    3. Depicting past emotions or feelings.
    4. Talking about deceased people.
  • Characteristics:
    • Uses past verbs (V2).
    • Common adverbs of time: last night/week, yesterday, ago, on a specific date, in a specific month/year.
  • Patterns:
    • Affirmative: Subject + V2.
    • Negative: Subject + did not + V0.
    • Question: Did + Subject + V0?
  • Regular vs Irregular Verbs:
    • Regular verbs end in -ed.
    • Irregular verbs have unique forms (e.g., drink → drank).

Past Continuous Tense

  • Purpose: Describes ongoing activities in the past, often setting the stage for another action.
  • Characteristics:
    • Format: was/were + V-ing.
    • Often combined with a simple past clause.
  • Patterns:
    • Subject + was/were + V-ing.

Present Perfect Tense

  • Purpose: Shows actions or events in the past with effects on the present.
  • When to Use:
    • Describing repeated actions between past and present.
    • Actions continuing into the future.
    • Recently finished actions.
    • Actions where time is not important.
  • Characteristics:
    • Uses have/has + V3.
    • Common adverbs of time: yet, just, never/ever, since, for, lately.

Past Perfect Tense

  • Purpose: Describes an action that happened before another in the past.
  • Characteristics:
    • Uses had + V3.
    • Common adverbs: after, before, just.
  • Patterns:
    • Subject + had + past participle.

Past Perfect Continuous

  • Purpose: Indicates an ongoing action in the past that has ended.
  • Patterns:
    • Subject + had been + V-ing.

Practice & Application

  • Exercises to apply knowledge of past tenses.
    • Completing sentences with correct verb forms.
    • Distinguishing between past tense forms.

Conclusion

  • Emphasized importance of learning the correct way to build confidence in speaking English.
  • Information about IELC's English courses and their benefits.

  • Contact: Anthony McCormick, IELC Managing Director for further details and consultations.