Class 3 English: Tenses - Simple Present and Past Olympiad Questions

Simple Present Tense

The affirmative form of the simple present:

Examples:

• Nancy and James speak good German.
• Nancy works in a restaurant downtown.
• The children play in the garden every weekend.

The interrogative form of the simple present:

Examples:

• Do you speak good German?
• Does Nancy work in a restaurant downtown?

The negative form of the simple present:

Examples:

• No, I don't speak German.
• No, she doesn't work in a restaurant downtown

The use of the simple present:

The simple present is used:

• to give your opinion - I like ice cream. I don't like spicy food.
• to talk about schedules - The library opens at eight. It doesn't open at 7.
• to talk about daily habits (routine actions)- Sara eats a cheese for breakfast every day. She doesn't eat cereal.
• to give facts - The earth circles the sun. The moon doesn't circle the sun.

The spelling of the third person singular form of the simple present:

All the verbs take an "s" in the simple present when conjugated in the third person singular (he, she, it) form:

Examples:

• I visit my parents every summer holiday. But my wife visits her parents every weekend.
• My brother meets his girlfriend everyday.

Simple Past Tense

We use the simple past tense to talk about things that happened in the past.

Examples:

• The children visited the zoo last week.
• The plane landed a few minutes ago.
• Jerry dried his clothes in the sun.

For most verbs, the simple past tense is created by adding a d, ed or ied at the end of the word. These are called regular verbs. There are also irregular verbs which do not follow this pattern.