Past perfect

We use the past perfect simple to talk about what happened before a point in the past. It looks back from a point in the past to further in the past.

• I hadn’t known the bad news when I spoke to him.
• I checked with the supplier and they still hadn’t received the contract.
• She had already told him before I got a chance to give him my version.
• The company has started the year well but was badly hit by the postal strike.

The past perfect simple is often used when we report what people had said/thought/believed.

• He told me they had already paid the bill.
• He said he believed that John had moved to Italy.
• I thought we had already decided on a name for this product.

Adopted from: http://www.englishgrammarsecrets.com/ 

This is the list of irregular verbs. The reason to call them irregular verb is that they do not follow the rules of simple past tense. Therefore, this list of words should be memorized. You may try to memorize as much as possible, at the same time take this list as a reference book. Hopefully you will be benefited.

adopted from http://baike.baidu.com/view/793891.htm

Simple past tense is as easy as present tense. The only difference is the form of the verb. It describes things happened in the past. E.g.

I go to school—-I went to school     I clean my room—-I cleaned my room

SPELLING RULES OF THE PAST TENSE

-If a regular verb ends with CONSONANT + Y change the Y to I before adding ED for both the simple past forms. E.g.

Carry——carried   copy—–copied   cry—–cried   marry—–married reply—–replied       study—–studied

-If a regular verb ends with CONSONANT+VOWEL+Y add ED with no other spelling changes for both the simple past forms. E.g.

Annoy—–annoyed   enjoy—–enjoyed   play—–played   stay—–stayed obey—–obeyed

-If a regular verb ends with E add only D for both the simple past and forms. E.g.

Agree—–agreed

If a one-syllable verb ends with CONSONANT+VOWEL+CONSONANT, double the final consonant before adding ED to form both the past simple E.g.

Plan—–planned   rob—–robbed   stop—–stopped   stir—–stirred zip—–zipped

-If a verb with more than one syllable ends with CONSONANT + VOWEL +CONSONANT, double the final consonant before adding ED (only when the last syllable is pronounced more strongly than the others) to form both the past simple E.g.

Prefer—–preferred   regret—–regretted   permit—–permitted but…visit—–visited   listen—–listened   develop—–developed remember—–remembered

-If a regular verb ends with L and the last syllable is not pronounced more strongly than the others, the final L is often doubled in British English but not in American English to form both the past simple E.g.

Cancel——-canceled (Am) —– cancelled (Br) Travel——–traveled (Am) ——- travelled (Br)

Adopted from: http://zh.scribd.com