Site icon English online tests

Past simple – negatives and questions

The Past Simple is used to talk about things that happened or existed before now.

Negative sentences

We use negative forms of Past Simple to talk about what we did not do in the past.

Regular and irregular verbs

To make Past Simple negative sentences, we use:

did not (didn’t) + base form of the verb (infinitive without ‘to’)

SingularPlural
did not (didn’t) go
You did not (didn’t) go
He/she/It did not (didn’t) go
We didn’t go
You didn’t go
They didn’t go

The verb ‘be’

In Past Simple negative, the verb ‘be’ has two forms — was not (wasn’t) or were not (weren’t):

SingularPlural
was not (wasn’t) happy
You were not (weren’t) happy
He/she/it was not (wasn’t) happy
We weren’t happy
You weren’t happy
They weren’t happy

Questions in Past Simple

We use Past Simple tense to ask and answer questions about actions or events in the past.

Yes/No questions

To create a question that will be answered with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, use ‘did‘ (or ‘didn’t‘ for a negative question) + base form of the verb (infinitive without ‘to’).

Regular and irregular verbs

To ask questions using Past Simple, we use:

(question word) did + subject + verb

SingularPlural
Did go?
Did you go?
Did he/she/it go?
Did we go?
Did you go?
Did they go?
Note: we must use did / didn’t with the verb do as well.

– Did she do her homework?
– Yes, she did, but she didn’t do the dishes.

The verb ‘be’

To ask questions using the verb ‘be’, we use:

was / were + subject + the rest of the sentence

SingularPlural
Was I late?
Were you late?
Was he/she/it late?
Were we late?
Were you late?
Were they late?

Special questions

Special questions (also known as wh-questions) are questions that require more information in their answers. They are made using wh- words such as what, where, when, why, which, who, how, how many, how much.

To make a special question, use the same word order as with yes-no questions but put a wh-word before the verb ‘did’. The structure is:

wh-word + did + [subject] + verb

Exercises on the theme:

Exit mobile version