Friday 10 February 2012

About the use of tenses (4)

I have written some articles about tenses, one of which you can find here.
I do not think that too many articles about the tenses “will kill us” because I do not believe in “enough is enough”, so I will resume today with the tips about the tenses, with a view to the Past Tense simple.

First and foremost, questions are a source of mistakes as students use also the verb of the sentence in the Past tense, which is not necessary because the auxiliary (did) is already in the Past tense. The idea is not to use the Past tense twice in the same sentence.

So do not say: “Did you went to work yesterday?”
Always say:” Did you go to work yesterday?”

Another issue refers to expressing habits in the past, for which we can use the Past Tense simple or the phrase “use to”.

So do not say: “I used to go to the beach last Saturday.”
Always say: “I went to the beach last Saturday.”, if you want to express an action that happened in the past.
Always say: “I used to work as a nurse.”, if you want to express a past habit.

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