G.6.1 - Simple Past

We recently looked at some phrasal verbs that end with ‘off’, so now it’s time to look at some that end in ‘on’. Here are seven phrasal verbs ending in ‘on’. How many of them do you recognise? Read through the sentences below and decide which phrasal verb is needed for each sentence. Then try to make your own sentences with at least three of the phrasal verbs listed. Good luck!

Can you remember the past simple form of the verb to be? Try this quiz to see if you can! Does the sentence need was or were?

The past tense is a verb tense expressing activity, action state or being in the past. In English, there are two types of past tense:

The Past Simple, Past Progressive, Past Perfect and Past Perfect Continuous are all past tenses.

Sometimes it can be tricky to decide which tense we need to use. Remember these rules to help you:

Below is a small text about a 10 year old girls experience on a trip to Disneyland. However, some of the text is missing. All the verbs below fit into the text but they must be changed to past simple.

Have you ever been to a theme park like Disneyland, how was it?

Missing Words

Remember to change these words to past simple.

What can you remember about using past continuous to describe interrupted time? Here's a little refresher:

When you want to talk about two actions in the past, it is often the case that one is past continuous and the other past simple.

The long action is past continuous and the short one, or the one that interrupts it is past simple.

For example:

"I was walking to school when I heard a loud crash."

Here's a quick reminder of the rules of using past simple and past continuous together.

In this sentence there are two verbs:

I was watching television when he arrived.

The first action is a long action - it lasted for a period of time. We therefore use the past continuous.

The second action is a short action that has interrupted the first. So for this we need past simple!

This is quite a difficult lesson and should give you a good challenge!

Many animals no longer exist today and some animals such as pandas have nearly disappeared.

In other words they are extinct or endangered.

This article has some missing vocabulary.

I have taken out some of the past simple verbs.

You need to decide which verb goes in which gap and change the verb to its past simple form.

Good luck!

Lesson by Caroline

A while ago I wrote a lesson about the difference between the past simple and present perfect tenses.

Can you remember what you learned in that lesson? Test yourself with this more challenging exercise. Instead of giving you two options, it is your job to work out which tense is needed and then fill in the gaps yourself.

Good luck!
By Caroline Devane

What can you remember about how to use these tenses? Here are some top tips for using the present perfect and the past simple and then a test to check your understanding.