Something More about Simple Past.docVIP

Something More about Simple Past 　　1 Introduction 　　The past tense is used to refer to something which occurred at a particular time in the past （Willis 2003： 34）. This seemingly simple rule could be very confusing and difficult for English learners in China. Simple past is crucial for it first introduces the concept of tenseand a good grasp of simple past would lay a solid foundation for future learning of more complicated tenses and aspects like present perfect and past continuous. This paper will analyze what simple past is， why it is difficult， and how to teach it to Chinese students. 　　2 Explanation of simple past tense 　　Literally past tense is closely related to the time past. Sinclair （1990： 250） defines four circumstances where simple past tense is applicable. They are： events occurred or cases in the past， past situations， something happened in a past situation whether or not that situation still exists and activities regularly or repeatedly took place in the past but which no longer occurs. These completed events， states or actions， being expressed in simple past tense， are usually used as a time anchorto establish the key time frameto move stories forward （Parrott 2000： 185）. Quirk et al （1972： 86） also explain the basic meaning of simple past in a similar way as to denote definite past time. However， he points out some exceptional cases where past tense does not refer to past time， such as indirect/reported speech， attitudinal past （relate to the speakers attitude rather than time）， and hypothetical past especially ifclause. 　　Whereas attitudinal past is treated by Quick only as a exceptional case， Yule （1998：61） challenges the wildly used image of timeline as the basis of grammatical category of tense， and debates that perhaps a better image would have the time of utterance （speakers now） at the center and other referenced situations being viewed as extending in different dimensions of time or possibility away from that center.The term remoteness（