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.