Hola Sydnee! There are lots of past tenses! The one you are describing is the preterito, a narrative tense for describing one-off actions in the past. It goes: comí, comiste, comió, comimos, comisteis (you pl. in Spain only), comieron. Endings are the same for -ir verbs, but -ar verbs go hablé, hablaste, habló, hablamos, hablasteis, hablaron. You need to try to ensure you're stressing the correct syllable, so that hable (he speaks) is distinguishable from hablé (I spoke) Common verbs are quite often irregular in this tense. eg ir, tener, hacer, dar, ver... You'll need to learn these separately, but there's normally a pattern. Also, look out for radical changing verbs such as pensar, which loses the i when the stress isn't on the syllable, so pienso (I think), becomes pensé (I thought), or volver, which loses the u, so vuelvo becomes volví. All the irregularity looks a bit scary at first, but don't worry! These are the most common verbs you will use, you'll practice them a lot and will pick it up pretty quickly. Chao, Dan

I'm afraid there's no easy answer. Spanish has two "simple" past tenses in the indicative mood, and, like English, can also refer to the past using auxiliary verbs (compound tenses / periphrastic verb phrases). Any good Spanish course will introduce the different ways of talking about the past one at a time. In the meantime, here's a link that might give you an idea of what you have to look forward to: http://spanish.about.com/od/verbtenses/a/two_past_tenses.htm And here's "comer" in the preterit and imperfect (both indicative): comí, comiste, comió, comimos, comisteis, comieron comía, comías, comía, comíamos, comíais, comían.

You may find more detailed information here: http://mgvillarroel.wordpress.com/2014/07/23/perfective-and-imperfective/ Cheers.

Sydnee, In addition, I recommend: http://www.spanishdict.com as a good resource. The textbook: "501 Spanish Verbs" is another good resource for students who are studying outside of the classroom.