The Simple Past tense is used to describe things that started and ended in the past. They might not happen again. If we want to express specifically when in the past it occurred, then we use the Simple Past .

Time References: ______ ago, in (past month/year), last _____, on (past day or date), when, yesterday

Visually, the Simple Past would be represented like this:

In old English, all verbs were irregular, but in 1066, when the Normans conquered England, they introduced French as the official language for hundreds of years. This introduced regular verbs into English, i.e. verbs that take -ed as an ending in the Simple Past tense.

Most English students spend hours learning and memorizing charts of irregular verbs, but very few actually learn as many regular verbs as they should. On the next link (Regular Verbs), there is a list of over 900 of them.

In addition, there is a link to a PDF file of Irregular verbs. Most lists show these in alphabetical order, and the student has no idea of what he should concentrate on. The PDF starts with Irregular Verbs 1, indicating the bare minimum a beginner should know. Irregular Verbs 2 shows the minimum an Intermediate student needs, Irregular Verbs 3 shows a bit more, and so on. Irregular Verbs 7 contains things most people do not need, unless they want to impress people. Many of the verbs are archaic and not in common use today.