Past Simple Tense

Take a look at these examples:

• He played volleyball on Sunday.
• Mary made a cake yesterday?

Both examples show finished actions in the past (on Sunday, yesterday, but also: last week/night, ago, in 1914). 

As you can see, the verbs have different forms in the past. That is because there are regular and irregular verbs in English. Regular verbs follow the rule to add -ED to the base form, while irregular verbs don't follow that rule, so we must learn them by heart. You can find them in the 2nd column of the list of irregular verbs.

One more thing, the -ED ending is NEVER pronounced /ed/, but /t/, /d/ or /id/!

e.g. /t/: pushed, gasped, looked, passed,

/d/: disappeared, wondered, turned, pulled,

/id/: decided, started.

Beware of the spelling changes! 

e.g. try --> tried, grab --> grabbed, etc.