I'm Alice Bryant.

Today, we are talking about the simple past verb tense, also called the past simple.

We can use many verb tenses to talk about the past, but the simple past is what we use most often.

We formed this tense by adding -ed or -d to most verbs in English.

But English has many verbs with irregular past forms, such as say, have, go, be and see.

We use the simple past to talk about completed actions in the past and to talk about habits in the past.

Listen to this speaker talk about a completed action in the past:

I watched some funny videos last night.

And when we use the simple past to talk about past habits, we usually add short phrases to make the meaning clear.

Listen to these speakers use the simple past to talk about repeated past actions:

I took drawing classes in middle school.

She ran every day for three months.

To form questions with the simple past, we add the verb "do," like this:

Did you take drawing classes in middle school?

Notice that when we use the past tense, auxiliary, "did," the main verb, "take," stays in simple form.

Negative statements in this tense also use the auxiliary verb "do", and that's everyday grammar.