1. That was history

Focus on

Can you remember your last weekend? Your last time on holidays? Your childhood?

Important events happen everyday in our lives and after a second... they belong to the past. They are history. So, when we want to talk about those events, we need to use a tense to express past time. This tense is called Simple Past (or Past Simple). In this Lesson, as an introduction, you will learn how to express past time with the verb be.

old boys

Imagen de Materiales EEOOII JU en Flickr. Licencia CC

 

 

Syntactically speaking, Simple Past works in the same way as the Simple Present, that is to say, there are three forms: affirmative, negative and interrogative. Let's remember the Simple Present with the three sentences below, one per form:

1. I am an English student.

2. She isn't her cousin.

3. Are they students at IEDA? Yes, they are.

As you can see, in the affirmative form, we place the subject ('I', in the example) before the verb be ('am'). For the negative form, we add 'not' or 'n't' if we want to abbreviate it, as in the example. Finally, for the interrogative form, we place the verb be ('Are') before the subject ('they'). The syntax for the Simple Past is the same. The only difference between the Simple Present and the Simple Past is the words we use. Compare now the two charts below:

 Simple Present                Simple Past

Imágenes de creación propia

Whereas in the Simple Present, there are three instances of the verb be, in Simple Past we only have two. That's simple! Check the sentences below. They are the three previous sencentes but now they are in the Simple Past tense (with more information in parenthesis):

4. I was an English student (when I was in the UK in 1999).

5. She wasn't her cousin (but her grandmother).

6. Were they students at IEDA (last year)? Yes, they were. (They work now in a company in Almonte).

But when do we use the Simple Past? Well, we use this tense when we want to express past time (of course!), the action is finished and it belongs to the past. For example, imagine that you hear a sad piece of news. It was last Sunday, at lunch time. At that moment you were very sad because the piece of news was very sad. Some days later, your life continues and you study English, for instance, now, while you are reading this explanation. At this moment now, you don't remember that sad moment on Sunday. You are not sad anymore. You were sad on Sunday and that belongs to the past. Now, you are not sad. That action is finished and it belongs to the past.

In this sense, we can talk about people who are dead now. Their life is finished and they belong to the past. For instance:

7. Séneca was a philosopher who was born in old Andalucía when Romans were in Iberia.

 

Apart from using the verb be in the Simple Past tense (was/were), there are other ways to express past time. For example, with time references. For this level, you only need to know the two basic ones -expressions with 'last' and expressions with 'ago'.

Look at the following calendar. It's Peter's:

 CalendarImagen de creación propia

According to the calendar, today is Monday 20th. If you pay attention, Peter was at IEDA on Friday 17th. So, we can express that action in the past in two different ways:

8. Peter was at IEDA last Friday.

9. Peter was at IEDA three days ago.

As you can see, 'last' goes before the time reference and 'ago' goes after the time reference:

 last&ago

Imagen de creación propia

There are other time references to express past time. They are common words. For example, look at the words in bold type (they are sequenced in chronological order):

10. Peter was at the cinema last night.

11. Peter wasn't at home yesterday.

12. Peter was in the park yesterday morning.

13. Peter and Narumi were at a wedding the day before yesterday.

14. Peter's was free a week ago.

15. Peter's calendar was a mystery two months ago.

smiling man

Imagen de Mike Mozart en Flickr. Licencia CC

 

Attention

Imagen de Stefano Brivio en Flickr. Licencia CC

Be careful! Sometimes Spanish speakers usually use the definite article 'the' before 'last'. And they create sentences like: 'The last weekend I was in El Ejido with my family'. Although using 'the' is not entirely incorrect, the meaning of the sentence is different. It's very subtle, but still different. Compare the two following situations:

16. We were in England for seventeen days. The first day, we were in London. The following day, we were in Bath. Then, the third day we [...] And finally, the last day (in our holidays), which was a Tuesday, we were back in London again.

17. I travel a lot because I am a flight attendant. Last Tuesday I was in Cardiff and now I am in California.

In number 16, the use of the article ('the last day in our holidays') means that the time reference belongs to a list of events, organised in chronological order whereas in number 17, 'Last Tuesday' refers to the previous Tuesday in the previous week. There is no list but just a time reference.

That's a lot of theory, right? What about doing some exercises to check if you can remember all this information? Let's practice in the following section!