University of Batna 2

Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Sciences, Department of Mathematics

Module: English
Academic Year: 2023/2024 (1st Semester)
Teacher: Mr. HABA El Mahdi
E-mail: mahdihaba94@gmail.com
Level Master 1 MA, AFTOL, EDP (Applied Mathematics, Functional Analysis
and theories of linear operators; Partial differential equations and applications)

Lecture 2
Tenses in English

The Simple Past Tense

1/ When do we use the simple past tense in English?

The simple past tense in English has many uses:

A. The Simple Past is used for actions that started and finished at a specific
time in the past. It’s also possible to use the simple past in a sentence
without specifying a time, but it must have previously been made clear
that the speaker is referring to a finished period. For example, I saw a
movie last week.

B. The Simple Past is used to describe a process that started and finished
in the past. In this case, the process of the action is long and is used by
specifying time periods such as ‘the whole year’ or ‘all day’. For instance,
I lived in Italy for five years.

C. The Simple Past can also be used in sentences that describe past habits.
These sentences have the same purpose as the expression ‘used to’. It
should be clear in this kind of sentence that the action referred to is a
habit. Time expressions like always, often, usually and never can be
used to underline this. For example, I often played football when I was a
young man.

2/ How to form the simple past tense?

For regular verbs, add –ed to the root form of the verb (or just –d if the root form ends in
an e): Play→Played Type→Type Listen→Listened Push→Pushed.
For irregular verbs, things get more complicated. The simple past tense of some irregular
verbs looks exactly like the root form: Put→Put Cut→Cut Set→Set Cost→Cost

For other irregular verbs, including to be, the simple past forms are more erratic:
See→Saw Build→Built Go→Went Do→Did Rise→Rose

Practice

1. Here are the past tense forms of some verbs. Write them in the base forms.

………………… took ………………… decided

………………… believed ………………… set

………………… was (were) ………………… went

………………… reversed ………………… made

Three of them end in –ed. They are the past tense form of regular verbs. The
others are irregular.

2. Read the text below.

In 1952, a major computing company made a decision to get out of the business
of making mainframe computers. They believed that there was only a market for
four mainframes in the whole world. That company was IBM. The following years
they reversed their decision.
In 1980, IBM determined that there was a market for 250,000 PCs, so they set up
a special team to develop the first IBM PC. It went on sale in 1987 and set a world
wide standard for compatibility i.e. IBM-compatible as opposed the single company
Apple computers standard. Since then, over seventy million IBM-compatible PCs, made
by IBM and other manufacturers, have been sold.

3. Ask and answer questions about the text.

Example: What did IBM company decide to do in 1952?

They decided to get out of the business of making mainframe computers.
4. Grammar questions
− Why is the past simple tense used in the text?
− How do we form questions?
− How do we form negatives?
 5. The present simple or the past simple. Put the verbs in brackets in the
correct forms.
a. The problem of constructing a regular polygon of nine sides which …………..(require)
the trisection of a 600 angle ……… (be) the second source of the famous problem.
b. The Greeks ……… (add) “the trisection problem” to their three famous unsolved
problems. It ……… (be) customary to emphasize the futile search of the Greeks for the
solution.
c. The widespread availability of computers …………… (have) in all, probability changed
the world for ever.
d. The microchip technology which ………… (make) the PC possible has put chips not
only into computers, but also into washing machines and cars.
e. Fermat almost certainly ………… (write) the marginal note around 1630, when he first
………… (study) Diophantus’s Arithmetica.
f. I ………… (protest) against the use of infinitive magnitude as something completed,
which ……… (be) never permissible in math, one ………… (have) in mind limits
which certain ratio ………....(approach) as closely as desirable while other ratios may
increase indefinitely.
g. In 1676 Robert Hooke.……………(announce) his discovery concerning springs. He
……………..(discover) that when a spring is stretched by an increasing force, the
stretch varies directly according to the force.

6. Learn how to say the following in English.

1) ≡ 4) → 7) ≥ 10) ±

2) ≠ 5) < 8) α 11) /

3) ≈ 6) > 9) ≤