Grammar Spod

I hope you have all enjoyed the festive time with all its mince pies, Christmas puddings, mulled wine and Christmas crackers… but now it’s back to school!

I am delighted to share with you the undeniable secrets of the lovely English language once again this month. Having had a closer look at the Present Continuous tense in last month’s StopPress, this time we will be looking at the Past Simple tense.

Let’s turn to the ever so useful Cambridge Advanced Learners’ Dictionary for the definition of the Past Simple tense:

The Past Simple tense is ‘the form of a verb used to describe an action which happened before the present time and is no longer happening’.

We use the Past Simple tense for the following:

Short, quickly finished actions and happenings
    ‘We chucked out the Christmas tree.’

Longer actions
    ‘When I was a child I believed in Santa and the Easter bunny.’

When referring to finished periods and moments of time
    ‘I bought some eggs yesterday.’

Repeated actions
    ‘My mother always bought me roses for my birthday.’

Story-telling of past events
    ‘Once upon a time, there lived a famous lady called Countess Grammar.’

I hope you enjoyed this introduction to the use of the Past Simple tense. Please let me know if there is a tense or a grammatical concept you would like to read about in particular in one of the following editions of StopPress. I would be delighted to hear from you at stoppress@laltorbay.co.uk.
Until next month – yours sincerely,

Countess Grammar [AM]