Written by Qualified French Expert Aurélie Drouard HKH, Licence d'anglais LLCE

Last updated: 2019-02-28

The English simple past tense is the most common way of expressing past time, such as for

• actions in the past that took place once, never or several times (habits in the past):
  • We visited her parents every weekend back then.
    
    
• actions that took place one after another:
  • They came in, looked around and then left.
     
• actions that interrupt other actions:
  • I was eating dinner when the phone rang.

Note the use of two different past tenses: the continuous, background action of eating (in the past progressive) and the one-time action - the phone ringing - interrupting it (in the simple past).

• conditions concerning hypothetical situations, in the if-clause of a conditional sentence:
  • If I talked too much, you would tell me to shut up.

Words and phrases like these typically signal the use of the simple past:

• 10 minutes ago
• in 2015
• last weekend, last year
• the other day
• yesterday

Here are some other very simple examples:

• Affirmative: I spoke ten minutes ago. He spoke last Saturday. They often visited in 2005.
• Negative: We didn't (did not) speak. She didn't (did not) speak either.
• Question: Did you speak the other day? Did she ever speak?