1. The man told a story

Icono de iDevice Example activity
As we said, the narrator of the story in the documentary uses the Past Simple tense to tell his past experience. Let's have a look at the structure of the sentences he uses.
Subject Verb (Indirect Object) (Direct Object) (How) (Where) (When)
We
 had   a football championship      
The coach made me play barefoot    
Despite it is a new tense, the structure of the sentence is, as you can see, the same as that of the Present Simple or the Present Continuous. It is essential that you remember that the word order of the English sentence is more fixed than that of other languages.
By Daveybot. C. Commons

So that you notice how word order in English works, try to do the same with the following sentences from the story:

The referee decided to stop the game temporarily

My father breathed a sigh of relief (under the bridge)

A flash of lightning stuck a bench on the right side of the park

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Icono IDevice Further knowledge
If you want to study word order in English sentences deeply, click here. And by clicking here, you will be able to get a file to do some amusing exercises on the topic. Remember that you must master it to improve your English properly.

Icono de iDevice Self-assessment
Write the following words in the correct order to make sentences.

1. Paco / a / mac / was / in England / wore / when / he .

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2. a/ The / in / football / football / team /man / played.

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3. could / objects / flying / see / They / some / their/ heads / over.

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4. All / very / them / excited / got / of.

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As you know, apart from modal verbs, there are two kinds of verbs: regular and irregular. Let's remember the difference between them! Regular verbs form the past simple and past participle by adding suffix -ed to the bare infinitive. On the contrary, irregular verbs have their own past simple and past participle forms and must be learnt by heart!

 


Bare infinitive Past Simple Past Participle Revision
Regular verbs

decide

want

study

agree

decided

wanted

studied

agreed

decided

wanted

studied

agreed

Adding suffix -ed

Pronunciation of -ed

(Video)

Irregular verbs

be

do

have

come

was/were

did

had

came

been

done

had

come

List of irregular verbs1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

 

 

 

The irregular verbs in the list have been divided into 15 tables according to difficulty and use. When you learn them, begin from table I onwards.

 

Icono IDevice Further knowledge

You can practice how to add suffix -ed to regular verbs to form the Past Simple and Past Participle forms by clicking here (Make sure which the bare infinitive is!!!). 

Watch the video on the right to review some of the most frequently-used irregular verbs!


Icono IDevice Curiosity
Twister vs. Tongue-twister

Do you remember what film the man of the story mentioned? That's it! Twister. The title of the film is another way to refer to a tornado. This film was released in Spain on 29 July, 1996. It was directed by Jan de Bont, and starred Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton, among others. If you want to know more things about this movie, click here. And if you are curious enough, click here and have fun reading interesting and amusing information about tornadoes and the movie itself.

However, this film has nothing to do with tongue-twisters. A tongue-twister is a phrase designed to be difficult to articulate properly. They are very frequently used to improve the pronunciation of sounds in English. The photograph on the right shows the hardest twister in the English language according to the Guiness World Records.


Once we've remembered the form of the Past Simple tense, of both regular and irregular verbs, and seen the pronunciation of the former, let's study the form of questions and negative sentences in next section.
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