Past Simple

Questions about finished past actions.

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  1. What was the first English word you learned?
  2. In what town or city were you born?
  3. Where did you go on your first family holiday?
  4. How did you feel on your first day of primary school?
  5. Did you do anything interesting last weekend?
  6. When did you last go to the cinema? What did you watch?
  7. What time did you get up this morning?
  8. Did you enjoy your last meal? What did you have?
  9. Did you have a favourite food as a child? What was it?
  10. Why did you decide to study English?
  11. When did you last make a phone call? Who did you speak to?
  12. What was the last book you read? Did you enjoy it?
PDF (Individual)
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PDF (Pairs)
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PDF (Threes)
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PDF (Cards)
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Other topics you may be interested in...


General Topics

Air Travel, Animals, Appearance, Art, Childhood, Cinema, Crime, Eating Out, Education, Environment, Ethics, Fame, Family, Fashion, Food, Football (Soccer), Friendship, The Future, Globalisation, Health, History, Holidays (Vacations), House and Home, The Internet, Language, Language Learning, Life, Literature, Marriage, The Media, Money, Music, Personality, Politics, Religion, Romance, Science, Shopping, Smartphones, Sport, Technology, Time, Town and City, Transport, Travel, University, Video Games, War, Weather, Work.


Business Topics

Advertising, Brands, Building Relationships, Change, Communication, Competition, Consultants, Crisis Management, Cultures, Customer Service, Employment Trends, Ethics, First Impressions, Human Resources, International Marketing, International Markets, Job Satisfaction, Leadership, Management Styles, Marketing, Mergers and Acquisitions, Money, New Business, Online Business, Organisation, Project Management, Raising Finance, Risk, Strategy, Success, Team Building, Training, Travel.


Grammar Topics

Present Simple, Present Continuous, Present Perfect, Present Perfect Continuous, Past Simple, Past Continuous, Used to, Have to, Going to / Pres. Continuous, Going to / Will, Comparatives, Superlatives, First Conditional, Second Conditional, Third Conditional, Mixed Conditionals, Should, Should have, Can, Could, Can / Could / Be able to, Is done / Was done, Being done / Been done.

How to use the past simple ESL discussion questions

It is recommended that you download the past simple ESL discussion questions in PDF format using one of the links above. The best way to encourage classroom interaction is to download and print the past simple discussion questions in the 'pairs' or 'threes' PDF format and then divide the questions by cutting along the dotted lines. This allows students to take turns asking and answering the past simple discussion questions in groups of two or three. Alternatively, you could use the 'cards' format to distribute the questions to any number of students to ask and share.

It is advisable to prepare students for using these discussion questions by first introducing them to the topic of past simple in an interesting and engaging way. An anecdote, quiz question or a related image or video could all be used to achieve this. Depending on the level, it may also be necessary to pre-teach any challenging vocabulary related to past simple contained in the discussion questions.

For more ESL discussion questions, see this site's main page. There are discussion questions on a range of topics including general, grammar and business English topics.

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