Unit 6: Great achievers
Past simple
Select a unit
- 1 Nice to meet you!
- 2 What to wear
- 3 Like this, like that
- 4 The daily grind
- 5 Christmas every day
- 6 Great achievers
- 7 The Titanic
- 8 Travel
- 9 The big wedding
- 10 Sunny's job hunt
- 11 The bucket list
- 12 Moving and migration
- 13 Welcome to BBC Broadcasting House
- 14 New Year, New Project
- 15 From Handel to Hendrix
- 16 What's the weather like?
- 17 The Digital Revolution
- 18 A detective story
- 19 A place to live
- 20 The Cult of Celebrity
- 21 Welcome to your new job
- 22 Beyond the planets
- 23 Great expectations!
- 24 Eco-tourism
- 25 Moving house
- 26 It must be love
- 27 Job hunting success... and failure
- 28 Speeding into the future
- 29 Lost arts
- 30 Tales of survival
Session 3
Does learning English help your career? Meet someone who thinks it does and hear how she talks about her life in past simple tense. Then, learn how to pronounce past simple verbs correctly.
Activity 2
How to pronounce past simple endings
The -ed ending of past simple words looks easy to say, but don’t be fooled – it’s not as easy as it looks! This activity will introduce you to the 3 different ways to say past simple –ed words.
Finn explains everything in this video. Have a look.
Watch the video
Hi, I’m Finn, with another pronunciation tip for you. Today we're going to look at how to say regular verbs in the past simple tense. There are three ways to do this.
First, for verbs that end in /t/ or /d/ like want or decide the ending is /Id/. Want - wanted; decide - decided. Now, for verbs that end in /k/ like look, /sh/ like wash, /ch/ watch, /s/ kiss and /p/ stop, the ending is /t/: so, kiss - kissed; wash - washed; watch - watched. For most other verbs, the ending is /d/. So, train - trained, love - loved, play - played.
Ok – game time! I’m going to say 10 verbs from the unit, and I want you to pronounce them in the past tense correctly. Ok, say it out loud. Don't be shy and see if you can get 10 out of 10.
kiss… kissed
want… wanted
stop… stopped
stay… stayed
climb… climbed
ask… asked
decide… decided
wait… waited
train… trained
and call… called
And that's it! How did you do? That's it for today's pronunciation tip. See you next time. Bye!
Next
Do you feel more confident about the past simple endings now? There's more pronunciation practice with Finn in the next activity.
Session Vocabulary
/Id/ For verbs that end in /t/ or /d/ sounds
decided
waited
wanted
competed
started
restarted
/t/ For verbs that end in /p/, /k/, /sh/ or /ch/ sounds
stopped
finished
asked
finished
looked
liked
walked
eavesdropped
/d/ For most other verbs
lived
called
loved
trained
scored
stayed
retired
climbed
achieved