Past Tense

1. Introduction.

This game is to practice simple past tense English verbs. It is intended to be used by ESL (English as a Second Language) students, to review past participles. The purpose of this game is not to explain or communicate the concept of the past tense, it is just to practice using the past tense. The concept of the past tense is difficult to illustrate visually and is actually better explained by the teacher in the classroom or you can go to the bottom of the page and click on the link to learn the theory of the past simple. This game is really only intended as a tool to practice past tense verbs and sentences. The language used is pretty basic, but I think it covers almost all the basic past tense verb forms (regular and irregular) and a few more difficult ones.

There are 3 different missions in the game. In the first task, you simply drag the verbs to connect the present tense forms with the past tense. The second task asks you to choose the correct word to complete the sentence. Finally, for the third task, you have to rearrange the order of the phrases. This sequence repeats with different sets of content.

There is also a review screen in which you can see each verb with its past participle and an image to convey the meaning.

The game uses a timer to introduce an element of challenge to the game. The timer can be adjusted by clicking the in-game settings button.

There are 22 sets of content. Each set has 8 verbs, with pictures and appropriate sentences to convey meaning and context. This gives a total of 176 entries. They are chosen from a list of basic English verbs with a slight bias towards irregular past tense forms; however, some verbs that are difficult to represent visually have been excluded. For example, it is quite difficult to draw a picture to show the meaning of the verb decide. It is my hope that almost all the basic verbs are covered here and that by mastering this game students will have a comprehensive grasp of all the basic past tense forms.