I explain how to form this tense in the video:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAGeT_LP4as
As you see, the regular forms are very simple. But the party begins with the irregular forms, because this is by far the most irregular tense in Spanish, so be sure that you can use the regular verbs and then proceed with the next blogs, called “Preterite. Irregular Verbs”.
I will give you now a couple of examples with this tense, using these time expressions:
ayer: yesterday
anteayer: the day before yesterday
el jueves pasado: last Thursday
la semana pasada: last week
el mes pasado: last month
el año pasado: last year
“Ayer corrí en el parque y anteayer, en el gimnasio. El jueves pasado participé en una carrera. La semana pasada, también nadé en la piscina pública. El mes pasado descansé, pero el año pasado entrené muchísimo”.
“Yesterday I ran in the park and the day before, in the gym. Last Thursday I took part in a race. Last week, I also swam in the public swimming-pool. Last month I rested, but last year I trained a lot”.
Did you notice the form “muchísimo”? When we add -ísimo/a as a suffix (a suffix is a particle at the end of the word), it means “a lot”. Examples:
Él es inteligentísimo. He is really very intelligent.
La película es aburridísima. The film is really very boring.
Last but not least, I will explain something of the utmost importance about the name of this tense, which is the equivalent to the English Simple Past. You will notice that in the video, I call it “pretérito indefinido”, but it has another name, “pretérito perfecto simple”. This is more precise than the other, because in grammar, “perfecto” means that an action was completed. We have other perfect tenses, not only this one. If you are doing your GCSE, you will hear that the teachers call it simply “the preterite”, which doesn’t mean absolutely anything, because the word “preterite” means “past tense”, and we have many past (or preterite) tenses. Remember then that the proper name is “pretérito perfecto simple”, this will help you a lot with the next tense that we are going to cover, called “pretérito imperfecto”.
