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Question: What’s the easiest way to learn irregular verbs?
Answer: Instead of using memorization techniques to remember irregular verbs, you should learn irregular verbs with the predictive method. This involves grouping the irregular verbs by common spelling patterns, and drilling them into your memory in a predictive way, not by memorization.
In this online English lesson, I’m going to teach you a fast way to learn the most common irregular verbs easily. You can watch the video here, or scroll past to read the lesson instead.
Unfortunately, You've been learning Irregular Verbs All Wrong All This Time
If you’re like my private teenage English learners, you have an English textbook with a list of irregular verbs at the end of it.
Your English teacher at school tells you to study the alphabetical list. He suggests you learn 5-10 new verbs every day until you have memorized the entire list.
Unfortunately, though, the reality of English learning doesn’t work like that. Yes, you need to study and learn all of the most common irregular verbs. Yet, you will find it more difficult going through that list alphabetically.
Now, you don’t need to worry about that anymore. I’ve got a technique for you where you can stop trying to memorize the irregular verbs. Instead, you will learn them in a more predictive way.
By grouping the verbs according to their shared spelling patterns, you can learn irregular verbs much more easily and effortlessly.
Keep reading for the text-based lesson, or watch the above YouTube video to master my technique.
Why are Irregular Verbs Important
Irregular Verbs in English are an important part of any English learner’s journey. In fact, the very first verb you learn is an irregular verb – to be.
As you begin to learn the Past Simple and the Present Perfect Simple verb tenses, that’s when you realize how important these verbs are.
Not knowing these verbs can block you from speaking due to the confusion of not knowing how to say the verb in the sentence.
Just imagine. There you are, starting your sentence with the subject. Then, you get to the verb, is it “thinked, thank, or thunk” no it’s “thought.”
While you were cycling through the options in your mind, you were “thinking” not “speaking.”
I see this every day in my English teaching business. You don’t want to get stuck in the moment of speaking. That’s why it’s important to learn irregular verbs to avoid getting stuck and making common mistakes.
Verbs Are the Key to Speaking Properly in English
The verb sits at the heart of an English sentence.
If you’re a non-native English learner, not knowing how to conjugate a verb into the past tense or past participle can easily break your ability to complete the sentence.
Constantly searching for the word or the conjugation can be frustrating, so you want to master all of the most common irregular verbs. That means being able to use any verb automatically and intuitively.
We tend to think of the verb tenses as being the key to being fluent in English grammar. However, it is the verbs themselves that are a major part of mastering the verb tenses.
Whenever you learn a new verb the first thing you need to do (apart from learning what the verb means) is to find out if it’s regular or irregular.
Irregular Verbs vs Regular Verbs
In order to define what an irregular verb is, we must first start with regular verbs. In English, the Past Simple and Past Participle of a verb is formed in a uniform way by adding the suffix (ending) -ed to the end of the verb.
Well, irregular verbs do not form the Past Simple nor the Past Participle in any uniform way.
Yet if you study any irregular verbs list, you will notice that the past forms are not random. Study the list long enough and you start to see patterns of verbs with similar spelling changes throughout the list.
How many Irregular Verbs are there
Officially, there are up to 638 irregular verbs according to pasttenses.com. However, most English learning resources state that there are about 200 irregular verbs in regular use.
Irregular Verbs 3 Columns
There are two past conjugation types for every verb in addition to their infinitive forms. Altogether, that comes to 3 Columns in the list:
- Infinitive
- Past Simple form
- Past Participle form
Irregular Verbs in the Past Simple
When you learn English as a non-native speaker, you usually don’t have to wait to long to start learning the irregular verbs. That’s because you usually learn the past simple sometime during the elementary level.
The Past Simple verb form is its own tense so you start learning both regular and irregular verbs to form simple sentences about the past.
To practice making simple sentences in the Past Simple, this easy word order formula will help you build accurate sentences:
- Who + Did + What + When
[Who + did + what | when] has everything you need to form sentences in the past simple tense. All you need is a verb in the correct form.
Irregular Verbs In the Past Participle
The Past Participle, unlike the Past Simple, has many more uses in English. The past participle is the form the main verb takes in any perfect tense, but there’s more to it than that.
Here are the tenses and structures where you’ll find the Past Participle being used:
- Present Perfect Simple
- Past Perfect Simple
- Future Perfect Simple
- Modal Perfect (Simple)
- All Passive Forms
- Participle Adjectives (also known as -ed/ing adjectives)
While that list of uses may seem like a lot, most English verb tenses and structures operate like math formulas. You plug in the right auxiliary verb(s) and the past participle and you form the tense.
Irregular Verb Lists
Most English coursebooks come with an irregular verbs list at the end of the book. As you go from elementary level to advanced, the list just gets bigger and bigger.
Below, you will find a list of 40 of the most common irregular verbs.
However, I never use such lists on their own to teach irregular verbs. What I like to do is to use the list to see how many of the verb patterns my students can find that are hidden within the list.
For instance, have a look at the verbs Bring, Buy, and Catch in the below list. Do you notice any similarities?
Let’s be honest, when your teacher told you to study a list like the one above, did you really follow the advice to learn five or ten a day?
No, I didn’t think so.
Break the Irregular Verb List into smaller groups of Verbs
When it comes to learning, one of the best ways is to break large amounts of information down into smaller pieces. And that’s what we’re going to do today.
By grouping these verbs according to their patterns, it will make the learning process so much easier.
Therefore, I’ve organized these verbs in such a way to show the patterns so you can learn these irregular verbs fast and easy. In the next section, you’ll see all the groupings and their patterns.
Make sure you practice these regularly to memorize all the most common irregular verbs. Of course, if you would like to practice along with me, feel free to watch the video lesson above.
best way to learn irregular verbs
Irregular verbs don’t operate like regular verbs in the sense that regular verbs you just add the same ending to all of them [-ed]. With irregular verbs, there is no rule to always follow.
Most teachers simply tell you to learn these by heart.
Patterns
There ARE patterns that you can find and then group the irregular verbs according to these similarities.
I have done this work for you already so all you have to do is use these and practice.
Here is an overview of the different patterns in the form of a nice infographic.
As you can see from the infographic, there are 5 different groups. 2 of those groups have subgroups:
- Verbs with [N] in the Past Participle
- Verbs with Vowel Changes
Let’s start with the first branch of the tree.
Verbs with [n] in the past participle
Each set in my study guide groups the irregular verbs according to their spelling patterns.
The vowels in each set change to a specific vowel with the same pronunciation pattern. This pattern may be the same or different for both the past simple and past participle forms.
Take these first 4 sets. Notice the spelling changes in each set from present form to past simple form to the past participle form.
Verbs with Vowel Changes
The next branch of irregular verb patterns contain verbs with vowel changes. There are seven of these.
The images are all self-explanatory. Simply study each list and practice. Take something to cover part of the screen. Drill each verb set. Soon, you will find that each set teaches itself.
You don’t need to remember these verbs when drilling them this way.
The rest
After those two groups along with their sub-groups, there are three remaining groups for you to learn.
They are irregular verbs with:
Same Present & Past Participle
the most irregular verbs
This group can be considered the first and most important irregular verbs for you to learn.
All three Forms the same
And I’m sure that this group will be your favorite to learn because all three forms are the same.
Summarizing the importantance of learning Irregular and regular Verbs
Mastering English verbs should be a core part of your learning routine. Verbs are the backbone of a sentence—without them, a sentence doesn’t exist.
When learning a new verb, one of the first things you should identify is whether it follows a regular pattern or if it’s an irregular verb.
Unlike irregular verbs, the regular verbs have an easy and predictable way to learn the verbs. What you do is add the suffix -ed to the end of the verb to make the past simple and past participle.
However, that simple suffix takes three different pronunciations. As an English learner, if you don’t get the different pronunciations right, you will make the common mispronunciation mistake, causing you to sound really awkward. And nobody wants that!
What you want to do is learn which sounds cause you to change the pronunciation of regular verbs. I help you do this in my full post on how to pronounce regular verbs in English.
Irregular Verbs are part of many verb tenses
Whether regular or irregular, you need the past forms of these verbs to complete the past simple and perfect simple verb tenses.
By perfect simple tenses, I’m talking about all 3 verb tenses on the perfect simple aspect:
- Present Perfect Simple
- Past Perfect Simple
- Future Perfect Simple
So let’s take a closer look at each one.
At the time you learn a new verb or set of verbs, you need to learn the past simple and past participle forms of each verb.
The perfect simple tenses, as mentioned earlier, all contain the past participle. Therefore, it is essential to learn each verb form – especially for the irregular verbs.
In my post full post on this topic, I help you distinguish between the present perfect vs the past simple grammatically. You can find that post with the link.
The narrative tenses consist of the past simple, past perfect simple, past continuous, and the past perfect continuous.
In order to use the past simple and past perfect simple, you need to know the irregular verbs and how to pronounce them.
In my related post, I teach you the differences between all 4 narrative verb tenses.
Another grammatical area where it is important to know the irregular verbs is with reported speech.
Reported speech involves reporting what someone said in the past. And to do this, we often put the verb tense back a level. That means:
1. Present Simple goes to Past Simple
2. Past Simple and Present Perfect Simple transform to past perfect simple.
And so on…
As you can see, the past simple and past participles are heavily involved in reported speech. And you will need to know the irregular verbs to effectively use reported speech.
Learn more about verb tense backshifts in my post on reported speech.
The final stop in understanding the relevance of irregular verbs is with the future perfect simple verb tense.
Once more, you will need the past participle form of irregular verbs to use this verb tense.
Learn more about how to use the future perfect verb tense with my full guide and video.
Roundup
Even though there aren’t any hard rules like adding [-ed] to the verb, irregular verbs can be grouped and learned much easier with a bit of organizing and practice.
If you want to get good practice, you can download my study guide here:
It includes the following:
- Tips on how to practice and learn the irregular verbs.
- The Graphic Organizer overview.
- Cut-out cards for you to do drill-practice.
Ready for your Next Lesson?
Since your in the mood to learn the forms that include either the Past Simple or Past Participle, these posts will be good as your next lesson:
That’s all for now. Until next time!
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