Which signal words require the past simple?
Every time expression that names a finished time: yesterday, ago, last week, last month, last year, in 1998, last night, when I was… As soon as one of them is in the sentence, the past simple is the right choice.
- The habit: find the time word first, then choose the tense.
- "Ago" follows the time phrase: two weeks ago, never "before two weeks".
- A finished-time signal word rules the present perfect out.
A1 · Signal words · 10 minSignal words for the past simple, taught brick by brick.
A structured ten-slide lesson for A1 learners. Hear the signal words in context, pick up the small routine of reading the time word before choosing the tense, then practise it across six interactive drills before a final six-question quiz. Every example comes from working life: report, offer, contract, client, meeting.
- CEFR levelA1 · Beginner
- Time to completeAbout 10 minutes
- SkillsGrammar, Listening, Writing, Speaking
- Bricks10 blocks
01 / 06
What signal words actually do in English
Signal words are small time expressions that give the tense away before you even have to think about the verb. For the past simple this group is unusually easy to recognise, because every member shares one property: it names a time that is over. "Yesterday" is over. "Two weeks ago" is over. "Last week", "last month", "in 1998", "last night" — all closed. That is exactly where the rule this lesson drills comes from: the past simple describes a situation located wholly before now, and a finished-time word points precisely there. So it pays to build a small reading habit. Before you build or correct an English sentence, look for the time expression first. If you find one that names a finished time, the decision has already been made for you, and you no longer have to weigh two tenses against each other. At A1 level that saves a lot of mental work, because you can then put all your attention on getting the verb form right. The order used in this lesson is deliberate: the clearest cue first, a named day, then the distance counted back with "ago", and finally the closed period. That is a teaching order — it tells you where to start, not which word turns up most often.
02 / 06
Three groups, clearest cue first
The first group is a named past day or date: "yesterday", "last night", "last Monday", "in 1998". The day or the year is fixed on the calendar and the clock has already run out on it. "I sent the report yesterday." A signal does not get clearer than that. The second group counts back from now: a time span plus "ago". "We signed the contract two weeks ago." The position matters here: "ago" follows the time expression and never precedes it. It measures the distance back from the moment of speaking and always lands on a finished point — "an hour ago", "three days ago", "ten years ago". The third group covers a whole period or stage of life that has ended: "last week", "last month", "last year", "when I was…", "then", "after that". "When I was an intern, I took notes in every meeting." The stretch of time is closed, so the past simple applies here too. All three groups lead to the same decision; they differ only in how they name the time — by a point on the calendar, by a counted distance, or by a stretch whose end has already been reached. Keep those three pictures in mind and you will recognise almost any signal word in this family on sight, even in phrasing you have never met before.
03 / 06
What the signal word does to the verb
The signal word decides the tense, but you still have to build the verb form yourself. In a statement that is straightforward: regular verbs add "-ed" — "work" becomes "worked", "call" becomes "called", "sign" becomes "signed". Irregular verbs have their own form that you simply have to learn: "send" becomes "sent", "write" becomes "wrote", "go" becomes "went", "take" becomes "took". These forms do not change with the person; "I sent" and "she sent" are identical. In questions and negatives, though, the auxiliary "did" carries the past and the main verb returns to its base form: "Did you send the email?" and "I didn't see it." Not "Did you sent…" and not "I didn't saw it" — the past is marked once only, in "did". Two very common mistakes live in exactly this spot. The first is double-marking the past after "did". The second is inventing a regular form for an irregular verb: "I sended", "I goed", "I writed". Both stand out to a listener immediately. If you know the twenty irregular verbs that come up most often in your own working day, you will already produce most of your professional past-simple sentences correctly.
04 / 06
Typical mistakes German speakers make
The most important mistake comes straight out of German. In spoken German you normally narrate everyday past events with the Perfekt: „Ich habe den Bericht gestern geschickt.“ That is perfectly correct German. German of course also has a simple past, the Präteritum — it is used above all in written narrative and with „sein“, „haben“ and the modal verbs — but it is not the usual form for spoken everyday storytelling. It is that habit that transfers into English and produces "I have sent the report yesterday". English does not permit it: as soon as a finished-time signal word appears in the sentence, the present perfect is blocked. The correct version is "I sent the report yesterday." The second typical error involves „vor zwei Wochen“. Translated word for word it comes out as "before two weeks" or "since two weeks", and neither works in English. English counts back with "ago", and "ago" sits after the time expression: "two weeks ago". Two smaller patterns follow. English questions and negatives need "did", where German simply inverts: „Sahst du die Mail?“ becomes "Did you see the email?" and „Ich sah sie nicht“ becomes "I didn't see it." And English puts neither an article nor a preposition in front of time expressions with "last": not "at last Monday" or "in the last week", but plainly "last Monday" and "last week". (A plain weekday keeps its preposition: "on Monday".)
05 / 06
Signal words that point the other way
A signal word is only really useful if you also know its counterparts. Words such as "already", "yet", "ever", "never", "since" and "so far" leave the time open: they do not say when something happened, they connect the event to the present moment. That is why they belong with the present perfect. One test reliably separates the two groups: does the sentence name a time that is over? If yes, past simple. If no, very probably present perfect. The interesting cases are the ones that can swing. "This morning" and "today" belong permanently to neither group, because they depend on the clock. Said at four in the afternoon, "I called the client this morning" is past simple, because the morning is finished. Said at ten in the morning, "I've called the client this morning" is natural, because the period is still running. "Yesterday" and "ago" never swing — that stretch of time is always closed. Once this difference is clear to you, you have cleanly separated the two most important past forms in English, and you have done it through the time expression rather than the verb form, which is far easier to see.
06 / 06
Signal words at work
At work you need these words every day, and usually in exactly the same handful of situations. In a status update you report what is done: "I sent the offer yesterday." In minutes you record what happened in the meeting: "We agreed on the deadline last Tuesday." The company history on a website says: "The company opened its Berlin office in 1998." And when you follow up with a client you count back: "I called you two weeks ago about the contract." In all of these sentences the time expression carries half the information, because it tells the reader whether something is still open or already closed. That is why it is worth watching it closely, especially in email. A quick self-check before you press send is enough: find the time expression in every sentence. If it names a finished time, the verb has to be past simple — "sent", "called", "signed", "agreed", "met". If you see a "have" or a "has" sitting next to a "yesterday" or an "ago", you have caught the mistake before your client does. If you want to keep going after this: the lesson past-simple (A2) drills the verb forms themselves, and signal-words-present-perfect (A2) shows you the other half of the pair.