Past Tense Verbs

Understanding how to correctly form past tense verbs within the English language doesn’t have to be a difficult task.

Defining Past Tense Verbs

The English language has three basic tenses: past, present, and future. Within these verb tenses, there is a progressive form to indicate ongoing action, a perfect form to indicate completed action, and a perfect progressive form to indicate ongoing action that will be completed at some definite time.

For example:

The purpose of past tense verbs within the English language is to express activity, action, state, or being in the past. For example:

·         “We visited the grocery store yesterday.” Visited is a simple past tense verb that is used to describe a completed action.

·         “Emily had said that she went to the mall.” Said is a past perfect tense verb that describes reported speech.

·         “They were driving for three days.” Were driving is a past progressive tense verb that describes a previous action which took place over a period of time.

To learn more about the various verb tenses visit the Past Tense Verb Chart and these online sites:

·         Purdue University Online Writing Lab - print out a handy reference chart.

·         English Tenses with Cartoons - provides a rather informative explanation of verb tenses, complete with clever cartoons to help you remember key concepts.

Forming Past Tense Verbs

To form past tense verbs, it’s helpful to remember these rules:

·         Simple Form: Although most past tense verbs end in -ed, certain verbs have irregular past tense forms that do not follow this rule.

·         Past Progressive Form: Use was/were with the verb form ending in -ing.

·         Past Perfect Form: Use had with the past participle of the verb.

·         Past Perfect Progressive Form: This tense is most often created by using had been and the present perfect of the verb (most often the verb form ending in -ing).

Be, have, and do are the most commonly used irregular verbs, but ESL Blues has a large list of English verbs with irregular past tense forms. Unfortunately, memorizing these irregular verbs is the only way to completely master the past tense.

Online Instructional Resources

If you’re a teacher looking for resources to use in your classroom, YourDictionary recommends visiting the following helpful websites for games, tutorials, printable worksheets, and lesson plans covering the use of past tense verbs in the English language.

For elementary students:

·      Lesson Plans Page has a lesson plan for grades 2 and 3 students regarding past tense verbs, but some of the activities may be able to be adapted for older students.

·        Teaching Ideas has a printable worksheet discussing how to change a verb into the past tense.

·        BBC has a fact sheet, quiz, and game for students to discuss the difference between various verb tenses.

For high school and college students:

·        Talk Easy has an interactive web-based tutorial demonstrating the difference between present and past tense verbs.

·         Past Tense Verb Forms provides a Guide to Verb Tenses.

For ESL students:

·       ESL Printables has a basic worksheet designed to help those who are learning English as a second language increase their understanding of past tense verbs.

·     English-Test has a past tense verb worksheet that can be used as an online tutorial or a printable classroom exercise.

·    English Page has an extensive web-based tutorial covering all of the various verb tenses. While highly informative, it is best suited for intermediate to advanced ESL students.

	Simple Form	Progressive Form	Perfect	Perfect Progressive Form
Past	took	had taken	had been taking	was/were taking
Present	take/s	have/has taken	have/has been taking	am/is/are taking
Future	will/shall take	will be taking	will have been taking	will have taken

Adjective Clause

An adjective clause is also called a relative clause or an adjectival clause. A clause is a group of words that have a subject and predicate. There are two kinds of clauses: independent and dependent. Independent clauses are sentences because they express a complete thought. Examples are: “The dog ran away.” and “Get the door.” In the second one, the subject is implied. To explain the function of an adjective clause, we will look at dependent clauses.

Dependent Clauses

Dependent clauses have the subject and predicate but can not stand alone. They depend on another clause to have meaning. Examples are: “When you finish your work” and "unless I get more money.” With each of these, you want to ask “What?” because the thought was not finished. Dependent clauses are also called subordinate clauses and they start with a subordinate conjunction. This is the word that links the dependent clause to the rest of the sentence.  

Examples of subordinate conjunctions are: how, where, when, why, unless, although, after, as far as, as if, because, before, once, whether, while, now that, until, since, and unless.

The three types of dependent clauses are:

·         Adverbial (or adverb) - Adverbial clauses function as an adverb and answer the questions: when, where, why, how, and how much. Examples include: “Now that it rained a lot, the grass turned green.” and “I am much olderthan my brother.”

·         Nominal - Nominal clauses function as a noun and can be the subject, an object, an appositive, or a complement. Sometimes nominal clauses start with an interrogative like: who, what, when, where, how, who, which, or why. Examples of nominal clauses are: “They always fought overwho should pay the bill” and “Whoever did thisis in big trouble.”

·         Adjectival (or adjective)

What Is an Adjective Clause

Adjectives clauses have a subject and a verb (or predicate). They will start with a relative pronoun, like: that, who, whom, whose, or which, or a relative adverb, like why, where, or when. Adjective clauses function as an adjective and modify nouns and pronouns. They are also called relative clauses. 

Just as the other dependent clauses, the adjective clause does not express a complete thought. It does not need commas separating it from the rest of the sentence if it has essential information in it; that is if you need the information it provides. If it gives additional information, then you use commas. A good way to test for this is to leave out the clause, read the sentence, and see if the meaning of the two sentences is different.

Here are some examples of adjective clauses. The adjective clause is underlined.

·         Chocolate, which many of us adore, is fattening.

·         People who are smart follow the rules.

·         I can remember the time when there were no computers.

·         Charlie has a friend whose daughter lives in China.

·         Wine that is produced in Tuscany is not cheap.

Adjectives

Since adjective clauses act like adjectives, you may want more information about adjectives. Some adjectives express the writer’s opinion of a noun or pronoun, like silly, lovely, awful, and outrageous. These are called opinion adjectives.

Some adjectives are descriptive, telling about the physical characteristics of size, shape, color, or age. Examples include: huge, wee, rectangular, oval, bluish, purple, new, and ancient.

An origin adjective tells where an object originated or where is came from. These are adjectives like: eastern, lunar, Egyptian, or German.

The composition of a noun or pronoun will be described by a material adjective.  Examples are: woolen, plastic, metal, or silk.

Some adjectives tell what purpose an object is used for. These many times end with an “ing.” Some examples include: baking, fishing, testing, or hunting. 

Lastly, some adjectives compare and have levels of comparison. These are words like: “good, better, best”, “dry, drier, driest”, and “beautiful, more beautiful, and most beautiful." Other adjectives compare but only on one level, like: unique, main, impossible, final, and inevitable.

Simple story

I had a bad experience. It happened last week.

I woke up late because my alarm clock didn’t ring. I got up quickly and had a shower in a hurry, and as you guess, I didn’t have enough time to eat breakfast.

I was driving my car fast in hoping I wouldn’t be late for work, and that prevented me from taking a good look at the traffic lights. I failed to stop when the light was red.

And I was still driving fast when suddenly a policeman on his huge motorbike overtook me and told me to stop.

“Oh, shit!” I whispered. I pulled out.

The policeman just stopped his motorbike right in front of my car. He got down his motorbike and approached me.

“Good morning! You ran the red light. Can I see your driving license and paper, please?” he said as I was getting out of my car.

I tapped my back pocket trying to find my wallet where I have my driving license and paper. But the wallet was not there. I checked my handbag in the car. It was not there either.

“Excuse me, Officer. I don’t have my wallet. I left it at home. I am in a hurry,” I said apologetically. Of course the policeman wouldn’t listen to such excuses. He told me to get back home and fetch the driving license and paper. He said I could leave my car there and he would wait.

Luckily I had some money in my other pocket. I caught a public transport and went back home. 30 minutes later I got back to my car. I showed the policeman my driving license and paper and he gave me a ticket for running the red light and for failing to produce my driving license and paper.

By this time I was 45 minutes late for work. I was sure my boss would be very angry. I had to drive to my office even faster. But there was another problem; I couldn’t find my car key. Perfect! I left my car key at home!

Cursing, again I headed back home and grabbed the damned key that was lying on the table near the door. The public transport trip to go back to my car was slow as the driver had to stop very often for more passengers. It took me 25 minutes to get back to my car.

When I was behind the wheel again, the time was 09.55. I was late, very late. I could see my boss’s nasty face and could hear the words he would use to address my being late.

So I drove the rest of the trip like hell.

When I arrived at my office, I was surprised. The gate of the office was closed and I didn’t see anyone there, not even the office boy. The main door was also closed.

And that was the time I realized it was Sunday.