English Grammar Rules & Mistakes: Learn All of the Essentials: Writing, Speaking, Literature and Punctuation Rules Complete with 10 Key Skills and Over 200 Common Error Examples

Looking to the past: understanding the past tense
As you can see by its name, the past tense is all about actions that took place
already. Even though this seems easy to navigate, it can be tricky as we
commonly misuse the past tense by mixing it up with the present tense in

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sentences. Just check through your work, paying close attention to your
tenses, to ensure you have conjugated the verbs consistently in the same
tense.
Simple past
I learned a lot from my English professor.
This is an example of the simple past tense. It simply describes an action that
takes place in the past.
The simple past tense is not difficult to conjugate as long as the verb is
regular. You mainly add ed to the end of the root verb.
First-person singular
I learned
Second-person singular
You learned
Third-person singular
He/She/It learned
First-person plural
We learned
Second-person plural
You learned
Third-person plural
They learned
When it comes to irregular verbs, however, it is a bit rockier. Below is a
common example, but for most you must learn them by heart.
First-person singular
I was
Second-person singular
You were
Third-person singular
He/She/It was
First-person plural
We were
Second-person plural
You were

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Third-person plural
They were
That is strange, I did not learn anything from that professor.
When it comes to making a simple past verb negative, it is not quite as
simple. You must add the words did not before a root verb. This can trip you
up as it looks like a present tense sentence.
I was not happy.
For the verb to be, you add was not or were not after the verb to make it
negative.
Past perfect
I was shocked to discover that my dog had eaten the entire birthday
cake.
The past perfect tense is an interesting tense used to describe a sequence of
events that took place in the past. It is not used as commonly as the simple
past tense, which does lead to common misunderstandings on how to use it. If
you remember it as a way to recount actions that have taken place in a certain
order in the past, you will find no problem with it.
In the above example, the simple past tense is first used to explain that the
person was shocked. Why was the person shocked? It is because the dog had