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Home / Verb Tense / The past tense

The past tense

The past tense is used to talk about events which have already happened:

“Last night, after he ate dinner, Dennis washed the dishes.”
“The Gomez family moved to Phoenix in 1974.”

The regular form of the past tense is formed by adding “-ed” to the end of the verb:

“I talked to him yesterday.”
“Janice showed us her photographs.”
“We visited our grandparents last week.”
“The children played in the snow all afternoon.”

Some verbs do not have past tense “-ed” forms. For example:

Base form Past tense
think thought
come came
begin began
see saw
run ran

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