Choose between the past tense and past participle

Key Notes :

Understanding Verb Tenses:

• Past Tense: Describes an action that happened and was completed in the past. For example: He walked to school.
• Past Participle: Used in perfect tenses and passive voice, often with helping verbs like have, has, or had. For example: He has walked to school.

Formation of Past Tense and Past Participle:

• Regular Verbs: Both the past tense and past participle are usually formed by adding “-ed” to the base form.
  • Example: walk → walked (past tense and past participle).
• Irregular Verbs: These verbs do not follow a regular pattern and often have different forms for the past tense and past participle.
  • Example: go → went (past tense), gone (past participle).

Using Past Tense:

• Expresses a completed action in the past.
• Often used with time expressions like yesterday, last week, in 2010, etc.
• Example: She ate breakfast yesterday.

Using Past Participle:

• Perfect Tenses: Combined with forms of have to show actions that are connected to another point in time.
  • Example: She has eaten breakfast. (Present Perfect)
  • Example: She had eaten breakfast before leaving. (Past Perfect)
• Passive Voice: Shows that the action is performed on the subject by someone or something else.
  • Example: The cake was eaten by the children.

Helping Verbs:

• Past participles need helping verbs (auxiliary verbs) to form perfect tenses or passive voice.
• Common helping verbs include has, have, had, and been.

Common Mistakes:

• Mixing up the past tense with the past participle.
  • Incorrect: I have went to the store.
  • Correct: I have gone to the store.
• Using the past participle without a helping verb.
  • Incorrect: She went to the store.
  • Correct: She has gone to the store.

Let’s practice!