Every verb in English has three principal forms. Learners often stop at two — the present and the past — and then the third one arrives in a sentence and looks like a mistake.
go · went · gone
write · wrote · written
work · worked · worked
Three forms, not two
| Present | Past simple | Past participle |
|---|---|---|
| go | went | gone |
| see | saw | seen |
| do | did | done |
| work | worked | worked |
The past simple tells a finished story: I went. The past participle does not tell a story on its own. It is a form that other words pick up.
Why it matters
English needs that third form for three jobs, and this course is those three jobs:
- After have / has / had — the perfect tenses.
- After be — the passive: the file was deleted.
- As an adjective — a broken screen.
It is not a tense. It is the piece those tenses are built from.