Past: questions and negations


Do you know that when you speak about an action that took place yesterday, two days ago, last week, last year etc, you need to place it in the past? It’s very logical.

In the phrase “Megan (perform) in front of a thousand of people in a concern last week, do you know what form the action needs to take?

Megan performed in front of a thousand of people in a concern last week.

The SPECIFIC PAST has a very simple structure:

What about NEGATIVE phrases? Do you remember the general structure of a negative phrase in English?

Do you remember which “flexi-action” shows the past?

Megan (not perform) in front of a huge audience last month.

Megan did not (=didn’t) perform in front of a huge audience last month.

Do you remember the structure of every question in English?

“Yesterday Megan performed in front of a lot of people, posted some new pictures of herself online for her fans, signed autographs and invited some other celebrities on stage with her”.

So, you know that the specific past needs the action to take “-ed” ending. Do you know that some verbs are exceptional and have an individual form that you need to memorize? It’s the case, for example, for the verbs “drive” or “drink” because you cannot say “drived” or “drinked“!

When you look at lists of exceptional, irregular verbs (in the past! they are normal in the Present and in the Future), you always see three different forms:
drive-drove-driven” or “drink-drankdrunk

The second form is used in the Specific Past : “Yesterday Megan drank ten cups of coffee to get some energy for her concert”.

The third form is used in the non-Specific past. What is non-specific past? It’s when you talk about an action in the Past without mentioning the date and time. In this case, you need to use “have” in the phrase:

“Megan has never drunk wine or beer because she hates alcohol”.


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