Past Simple Questions

Learn how to form and use past simple questions to improve your English skills. We guide you through easy-to-follow explanations and examples. Perfect for beginners and anyone looking to review past tense grammar. Watch now to boost your English proficiency!

Grammar

Practice how to use Past Simple questions.

Transcript

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Introduction:

• Host: Hello and welcome to the English Magnet. Today’s video: Past Simple Questions made easy! Asking questions isn’t that hard, but being understood is crucial. We’re going to clarify all this right now. By the way, a link to some free material to practice by yourselves can be found in the description below. Alright, let’s jump right into it!

Part 1: Did 

Let’s begin with the keyword ‘did’. When forming questions in the past simple with regular and irregular verbs (exception: to be / was & were),”did” is your go-to word. But, we have to cover closed, open-ended and tag questions. We’ll also go over questions with was and were and negative questions. 

Part 2: Closed questions

When asking a closed question, you’re looking for a yes/no answer. To form one, you start with the keyword ‘did’ and you follow it with the subject and the base form of the verb. (Did + subject + base form) 

Did you eat pizza? (Yes/No) 

Did they dance? (Yes/No) 

Did she laugh? (Yes/No)

See how ‘eat’, ‘dance’ and ‘laugh’ are all in their base form. There’s no ‘ate’, ‘danced’ and ‘laughed’ since ‘did’ is already showing the past simple. 

Part 3: Open-ended questions  

Open-ended questions are looking for a long answer, anything but yes/no! They manage this by adding a question word at the beginning (what, where, when, who, why, how, etc.). 

What did you eat? (I ate pizza.)

Where did they dance? (They danced in the club.)

Why did she laugh? (Because she heard your joke.)

Basically, you add a question word at the beginning and you’re good to go. 

Part 4: Tag questions 

Tag questions are a way to double-check something. You add a mini-question after a statement, using a comma, did or didn’t and a subject pronoun (I, you, he, she, it, we, they). They’re rather common in English when someone’s trying to confirm what they’re saying. Just remember that a positive statement is followed by a negative question tag and vice versa. 

You ate pizza, didn’t you? You didn’t eat pizza, did you? 

They danced in the garden, didn’t they? They didn’t dance in the garden, did they? 

She laughed at the joke, didn’t she? She didn’t laugh at the joke, did she? 

Easy, isn’t it? 😉 

Part 5: To be – was / were  

The one case you won’t see ‘did’ in a past simple question is with the verb ‘to be’. In such questions, you simply put ‘was/were’ followed by a subject for closed questions 1 (closed questions: was/were + subject). For open-ended questions, again you simply add a question word before the rest 2 (open-ended questions: question word + was/were + subject). A tag question uses was or were instead of did 3 4 (tag questions: statement + was/were + subject). 

1 Was Sheila in town last week? (closed questions) 

2 Why were you late yesterday? (open-ended questions) 

3 They were surprised by the news, weren’t they? (positive statement, negative tag) 

4 He wasn’t thrilled about the change, was he? (negative statement, positive tag) 

Part 6: Negative Questions

Finally, in a negative question, the negation is embedded in the question itself. You can use ‘not’ after ‘did’ to form the negative question. However, it’s more common in spoken English to use the contraction ‘didn’t.’ So, both ‘Did he not visit the museum?’ and ‘Didn’t he visit the museum?’ are correct, but the latter is more commonly used in everyday conversation. While we’re on this, the use of negative questions often implies a bit of surprise, doubt, or it’s seeking confirmation. Didn’t you know? 😉 

Wrap up

Host: So, there you have it! Closed, open-ended, and tag questions in the past simple. Remember ‘did’ is the only word marking the past unless you’re using was or were. Be sure to watch more of our videos! Hopefully, this has been helpful. Keep practicing, and you’ll get the hang of it. Thank you for watching. Until next time!