Grammar ~21 min of the core left

Talk about how you spent the weekend

After this lesson you can

I can say what I did yesterday and at the weekend.

Start the lesson Core 19–21 min · steps: 6 · optional: +2

Declared core time. Two of the core blocks carry no figure at all, so the real lesson is longer than this sum.

Grammar

4 min

Regular verbs make the past tense with the ending -ed, and it is the SAME for all persons.

I / you / he / she / we / they worked, lived, watched
I worked at home yesterday. you say what you did yesterday
She watched a film. you say what she did
We walked in the park. you say what you and other people did

No -s and no changes for different persons: one form for everyone — this is the simplest tense in English.

Spelling: work → worked, live → lived (only -d), study → studied (y after a consonant changes to i), stop → stopped (the consonant doubles).

In this lesson — statements only. Questions and negatives in the past are made with the helping verb did, and that is an A2 topic: Did you work?, I didn't work. For now, talk about the past in positive sentences.

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Common learner errors

written for your language
1

An ending for the person

✗ He workeds

✗ She workeds

✓ He worked

In many languages the past form changes with the person (Spanish trabajé "I worked", trabajó "he/she worked"; Arabic ʿamiltu "I worked", ʿamilat "she worked"). And the -s of he works from lesson 9 easily comes back. In the English past there is one form for everyone.

2

The present instead of the past with yesterday

✗ Yesterday I work at home

✓ Yesterday I worked at home

Chinese (zuótiān wǒ zài jiā gōngzuò, "yesterday I at home work"), Vietnamese, Thai and Indonesian do not change the verb for the past: the word for "yesterday" is enough. In English, with yesterday, last week the verb must be in the past.

3

-ed on irregular verbs

✗ goed, ✗ haved → the correct forms come in lesson 29. Learners of every language do this, and so do English-speaking children: the rule is so simple that it seems to work for every verb.

Pronunciation

4 min

The ending -ed is said in three ways, and the letter e in it is usually not pronounced at all.

Sound After what Examples
/t/ after voiceless sounds worked, watched, stopped
/d/ after voiced sounds and vowels lived, played, opened
/ɪd/ only after t and d wanted, needed, started

The main mistake is to say -ed as a separate syllable everywhere: worked is one syllable, ✓ /wɜːkt/, not ✗ /ˈwɜːkɪd/. An extra syllable marks a foreign speaker more clearly than an accent does.

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Text

3 min

Last weekend I stayed at home. On Saturday I cleaned my flat and cooked dinner. In the evening I watched a film and listened to music. On Sunday the weather was warm, so I walked in the park. I talked to my sister on the phone. We laughed a lot.

Reading aloud

Exercises

8–10 min

1. Gap fill.

  1. I (work) at home
  2. She (watch) a film
  3. We (walk) in the park
  4. He (study) English
Show the answers
worked, watched, walked, studied.

2. Matching.

  1. worked
  2. watched
  3. lived
  4. played
  5. wanted
  6. started
Show the answers
/t/ — worked, watched; /d/ — lived, played; /ɪd/ — wanted, started.

3. Error correction.

  1. Yesterday I work at home.
  2. She workeds in a shop.
  3. Last week we play football.
Show the answers
Yesterday I worked at home. / She worked in a shop. / Last week we played football.

4. Write the past form.

stop, study, live, open, listen

Show the answers
stopped, studied, lived, opened, listened.
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Summary

Covered

  • -ed on regular verbs
  • spelling
  • the three ways to say the ending
  • past time words

Next — lesson 29: irregular verbs and telling the story of a trip in order.

End of the core

The lesson counts as done once the exercises are done. Everything after this is optional.

Lesson 29

optional

Vocabulary for your deck

13 words
  • stay /steɪ/ to be in one place and not leave (stay at home)
  • clean /kliːn/ to take the dirt away from something; with no dirt
  • garden /ˈɡɑːdn/ a place next to a house with grass, flowers or trees
  • relax /rɪˈlæks/ to rest and feel calm
  • listen to /ˈlɪsn tuː/ to try to hear something (listen to music)
  • talk to /ˈtɔːk tuː/ to speak with someone (talk to my sister)
  • laugh /lɑːf/ to make the sound people make when something is funny
  • start /stɑːt/ to do the first part of something; to begin
  • finish /ˈfɪnɪʃ/ to do the last part of something; to end
  • need /niːd/ you can't do without it
  • weekend /ˌwiːkˈend/ Saturday and Sunday
  • picnic /ˈpɪknɪk/ a meal you eat outside, for example in a park
  • so /səʊ/ and that is why (it gives the result)

Writing

Five sentences about last weekend, all in the past tense.

Example

Last weekend I stayed at home. I cleaned my flat and cooked dinner. In the evening I watched a film. On Sunday I walked in the park.

Checklist

The draft is saved on this device
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Practise this lesson in the other sections

Dictationbased on this lesson Write down what you hear. The check shows every word that differs, and how. Write the dictation Reading aloudbased on this lesson Read the lesson text aloud — speech recognition highlights the words it did not catch. Read the text aloud Reading and listeningA1–C1 Texts at every level with comprehension questions; the transcript opens after you answer. Try it

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