The simply different group contain verbs where the simple past tense form of the word differs from the base and past participle use. A good exercise is to try to find as many verbs as you can that fit this group. Other examples include the following verbs: ‘buy or bought’, ‘feel or ‘felt, ‘hear or heard’, ‘keep or kept’, ‘say or said’, ‘sell or sold’ and so on. This is a very large group of irregular verbs. Past Participle: ‘My glasses were found.’ For example, the verb ‘find’.īase Form: ‘Can you help me to find my glasses?’ Group Two – The Common PastĪs the name we have given them suggests, for these verbs the two past forms (past simple and past participle) are the same but the base form differs. Practice using these by putting them into sentences using the base form, simple past and past participle. Other verbs which fit into this constant group include ‘let’, ‘cost’, ‘put’ and so on. Past Participle (passive tense here): ‘My leg was hurt.’ (adjective use) ‘My hurt leg was painful.’ These are irregular verbs where the same form is used in the base, past simple and past participle.

Sadly, there is no way beyond the hard grafts of learning and practising because, as the name suggests, irregular verbs do not follow a pattern. We have called each group by a name which will help us to remember them. Irregular Verbsīut these are not! Because, like oddly shaped piece of furniture which does not fit easily into a room, so the 200 or so irregular verbs do not fit easily into a sentence.Ī top tip is to learn irregular verbs in four separate groups.

The same is true for ‘arrive’, for ‘wait’ and so forth, (We still add ‘ing’ when we use the gerund, and add ‘to’ when turning it into).ĭo, for example, the verb ‘call’ is ‘call’ in its base form, then ‘called’ in both the past simple and past participle. If the verb ends in a ‘y’ we change the last letter to an ‘I’ and then add the ‘ed’. We simply add ‘ed’ – ‘d’ if the verb already ends in an ‘e’ to turn the verb from its base form to the past simple or past participle form. We would expect it to be ‘singed’, but the word changes to ‘sung’.

The other, though, starts to go wrong in the past participle. The second of these, ‘finish’ follows the rules to a tee and is therefore a regular verb. We have worked on two verbs in these examples, ‘sing’ and ‘finish’. ‘It was finished.’įinally, we can use the verb as an adjective, ‘The song is finished.’ We can use the passive form, which is preceded by an auxiliary (or helping) verb such as ‘was’. Usually, but not always, the addition of ‘ed’ turns the verb into the present perfect. The first is called the present perfect.Īs we can see, the action has just happened, it is in the present. Get started for free It’s Finished – The Part Participleįinally, we can use all verbs in three basic past participle forms.

Present past past participle list