My name is Emma, andtoday I am going to teach
you how to learnirregular past tense verbs.
So, I'm going to teach you someeasy methods and tips on how to do this.
So, first of all, let's talk aboutwhat is an irregular past tense verb.
Well, I have here two sentences.
The first one says"yesterday I wanted to travel".
The second sentence says"yesterday I ate the cake".
So, in English, whenwe're talking about the
past tense, so somethingthat happened in
the past, like "yesterday", "last month","last year", we need to do something to the
verb.
So, most verbs follow this "ed" rule,which you might have learned before.
"Learned" is an example of this.
For many verbs, we add "ed" tothe end to make it a past tense verb.
But not all verbs followthis, unfortunately, in English.
We have these thingscalled irregular verbs.
Irregular verbsare verbs like "ate".
We don't say "he ated the cake".
That would makethings really easy, but
unfortunately, English isnot the easiest language.
Those of you learningprobably know this.
So, you might think, "Why do we sometimesuse 'ed' and why do we sometimes have these
verbs that areirregular, like 'ate'?"
Why, Emma?" andwe have this sad face.
The reason English isso complicated, it's not
because I created thelanguage; it's because
the old parts of Englishhave these irregular verbs.
So, any verb that'sextremely old from the
beginning or the earlydays of English, they
have...
So, for example, "spoke" isthe irregular verb of "speak".
We already talkedabout "ate", which is the
irregular verb of "eat";"did" is the irregular
past tense verb of "do"; or "sang",that's the irregular past tense of "sing".
So, all of theseverbs are very old.
Now, the newer verbsin English are the ones
that are the easy onesbecause you just add
"ed".
So, for example,"decided", "visited",
"wanted", these areall later verbs in English.
And even when in English we makenew verbs, we usually use the "ed".
So, for example, "googled","I googled my name."
Or even "zoomed", alot of people use "zoom".
We've turned it intoa verb, "zoomed".
"Yesterday, I zoomed my sister."
So, in this video, we're not going to focuson these easy, regular verbs; we're going
to focus on the hard, irregular verbs, andI'm going to teach you how to learn these
Alright, so, the firstpart of my method for
learning irregularpast tense verbs is to
learn the mostcommon ones first.
These are the mostcommonly used in English.
I recommend you start with the mostcommonly used ones first and memorize them.
You might already knowa lot of these already.
So, for example, the verb "be", here's thepresent tense, which might be "I am", "he
If we're talking about the past,we don't use "ed" here; it's irregular.
Most of you probablyknow the "be" verb.
The next oneafter that is "have".
"Have" in the present form becomes "has" or"have", so "I have", "she has", it depends
If we're talking about "he", "they", "we","you", it might change the verb, so we have
Well, what's the pasttense of this verb?
So, if I'm talking about last year,last year I had a lot of fun, I could say.
So, this is an irregular verb; it'sirregular because it does not end in "ed".
It's following a different set ofrules; it's an irregular past tense verb.
So, here is thepresent tense, "do" or
"does", and the pasttense of this is "did".
"Did you go to theconcert last week?"
"I did", so we usethis for the past tense.
"Go" in the present tense is"go" or "goes", "I go", "he goes".
In the past tense,it's "went", okay?
"Say", you probably know "say" or "says"in the past tense becomes "said", and you
might know all of thesealready, which is great if you do.
In the present tense,it's "get" or "gets".
After that, in thepast tense, it's "got".
Here it is in the presenttense, "made" is the past tense.
So, you might knowall of these already, so
if you do, then you learnthe next most common
irregular verbs,which are "think".
What's the pasttense of "think"?
"Feel", what's thepast tense of "feel"?
This is a hard one for a lotof people, "felt", "I felt that".
And then we have "leave" which is "left","bring" which is "brought", "buy" which is
"bought", "come" which is"came", and "eat" which is "ate".
So, these are the mostimportant ones to learn.
If you don't know anyof these, learn them
first, but once youlearn these, you can also
Google, "Hey, Google, what's the20 most common irregular verbs?"
Or you can Google, "What's the30 most common irregular verbs?"
So, this is a goodway to figure out what
verbs are the mostimportant to learn first.
Now I'm going to teach you howcan we memorize this in an easy way.
So, you know, first, figure out what verbsto look for, the most common, and now let's
figure out how tomemorize these verbs.
All right, so the first tip is learn themost common irregular past tense verbs.
Another great tip or method is to learnthe common patterns of irregular verbs.
When you first learnthem, it looks random.
Oh, why is there an "e" here,and an "i" here, and an "o" here?
But really, there arepatterns for irregular
verbs, so I'm going toshow you some of those
When you learn thepatterns, so here I have
group 1, group 2, group3, group 4, by learning
the common patterns, it can help youmemorize these irregular verbs faster.
The patterns also have past participles,so there's three parts to a pattern.
You have the presenttense, you have the simple
present tense, andthen you have the past
So, I'll explain whata past participle is
in a moment when welook at our first group,
but my main point is when you're learningthe pattern, also learn past participles.
You will need to know them when youlearn the present perfect tense anyway.
So, the first group we're going to look atis a pattern where you'll notice the vowel
So, the present vowel is different than thepast tense vowel, which is different from
So I have herethe verb "to sing".
Sing, you know, la-la-la-la-la.
Okay, so right now I just sang.
So, "sang" is thepast tense of "sing".
Notice what changed wasjust the second letter here.
It went from an "i" to an "a".
Now, if I was using the present perfect, Iwould need what's called a past participle.
A past participle is theverb form that we use
after "have" and "had"with certain grammar
tenses, specificallythe perfect tense.
Or you can also use it withsome other tenses, too, but...
Notice here, the past participle is "sung"with a "u", so if I was memorizing this, I
would think "sing-sang-sung","sing-sang-sung", "sing-sang-sung".
So we have the present "sing", the past"sang", and the past participle "sung".
It's also good to memorizethe past participles
because students oftenconfuse the past tense
So they might say, "Oh, yesterday I sung ata karaoke", but no, "yesterday" means they
want to use the past tense ofthe correct verb would be "sang".
So it's good tolearn these patterns.
Let's look at another example forgroup one when the vowel changes.
"Drink" is a verycommon verb in English.
"Yesterday" or "lastweek", "last year", we
would say "drank", andso you see the "i" becomes
an "a".
"Yesterday I drank some milk."
Now, the past participle isactually with a "u", just like "sung".
"I have drunkhorse wine before."
I know it's a strangeexample, but it's true.
So you can use this when you have "have"or "had", but this is the past tense.
"I have swum in thePacific Ocean before."
So "sing, sang, sung", "drink,drank, drunk", "swim, swam, swum".
These are all the same pattern.
We have the "i" inthe present, the "a" in
the past, and the "u"as the past participle.
So many irregularverbs follow this pattern.
Now, let's look at another patternwe might see, what I call group two.
Okay?
If you're learningEnglish, you will be happy
when you find a grouptwo irregular verb.
Why?
You don't have to do anything.
So, I can say - if I'mtalking about now,
the present, I can say,"Every Tuesday I put
Now, if I'm talkingabout the past, so before,
same verb, "Last winterI put on my gloves."
And then we also have"put" for the past participle.
I'm trying to think of agood example for this.
"I have put makeupon a cat before."
That's not true,but just an example.
It's a strange example,I'm sorry, but...
The bottom line is "put,put, put", all the same.
"Set" in the presentis the same in the
past, and it's the sameas a past participle.
So, group two is the best;you don't have to do anything.
There are a lot of verbs that are irregularwhere the past participle ends in "en".
"Break", so "I hope Idon't break my toe."
"I broke a finger before",or sorry, "I broke...
Last month I broke my computer."
And then we have"broken", which is the past
participle, andyou'll notice it's "en".
So "drive" is for the present, "drove" isfor the past, "Last night I drove so far",
and then "driven"is the past participle.
So, again, when you learn a new irregularverb, think about what group is it in.
Now, the hardest group is what I call theunique group, where they follow their own
rules, so it has less patterns.
So for example, "go","went", "gone", "see",
"saw", "seen", sometimesyou'll have some verbs
where they don't followthese patterns, they
don't follow reallyany patterns; they have
And those are the hardest becauseyou really have to memorize them.
Okay, so we've coveredsome different irregular verbs.
I told you learn themost common ones first,
learn the past participleat the same time,
so that way you can,you know, really memorize
"sing", "sang", "sung","swim", "swam", "swum",
It's easier when you say allthree and memorize it that way.
So, I've told you aboutirregular past tense
verbs, the past tenseverbs that do not use
"ed".
Now, there's a lot of them, sohow do we memorize these?
Well, it's all about practice.
I'm going to give you some ideasnow on how to practice these words.
So, one thing many studentsfind helpful is to use flashcards.
So, a flashcard is where on one side youhave the present tense, and then when you
flip it, there's the past tense.
Flashcards are great becausethey help you quiz yourself.
And remember, the way to really learnsomething is to test yourself frequently.
So, maybe you lookat it, and then a minute
later you do it again,and then five minutes
later you try it again, and youkeep doing this day after day.
I'm using them tolearn Chinese, and I'm
finding my Chinese isreally improving this way.
So, some people liketo use paper flashcards.
Other people like to use apps.
There's manydifferent apps online.
The apps are frequently changing, but youcan use a flashcard app as well to practice
this.
So, one of the bestways to learn new words,
especially irregularverbs, is to read stories
So, there's nowsomething called ChatGPT.
There's also otherAI platforms you can
use, and they're greatfor creating stories.
And they're really good forcreating stories for English learners.
So, what you can do is you can go to one ofthese AI sites - so, I like to use ChatGPT,
but there's many differentones - and you can
just ask it, "Write astory, a short story
with irregular past tense verbs, orwith verbs in the irregular past tense."
And then you'll get a shortstory with a lot of these verbs.
By reading these stories, you see the verbsmore, and you see them in the right context
The more you readthem, the more familiar
they become, and ithelps with memorization.
So, you know, I love doingthis when I learn Chinese.
I read Chinese stories all the time, and Iask ChatGPT to write me Chinese stories.
You can do the samething with irregular verbs.
Ask AI to write you a shortstory using an irregular...
Or using irregular Englishverbs in the past tense.
So, another thing youcan do is create a chart.
I've written at the top present tense,and then I have my present tense words.
I've written past tense,and I have the past
tense form, and then Ihave the past participle.
So, I have "eat", "ate", "eaten", "buy","bought", "bought", "do", "did", "done".
Creating a chart likethis is really helpful.
You know, thinkabout the most common
irregular past tenseverbs, start with those.
Create a chart and put itsomewhere you will see it a lot.
Maybe on your kitchen table,maybe on your mirror in the bathroom.
It's good to put this somewhere where youwill see it, and then if you do this every
day you look at it, and youjust say the words to yourself.
"Eat", "ate", "eaten", "buy","bought", "bought", "do", "did", "done".
It almost sounds like music when you havethe three of these together, so repeating
it can really helpyou remember it.
So, repeat it often withyour voice, and read it often.
There's a lot of great songswith the irregular past tense.
Beatles, the Beatles I love, they singslowly, their songs are usually simple.
You can find a lot of great songslike "Yesterday" by the Beatles.
Listen to it and try to hearthe different irregular verbs.
You can probably find quitea few in these types of songs.
Finally, it's reallyimportant to also try
to use the irregularpast tense in sentences
It's also a good ideato write sentences, too.
So, for example, youcan think about your day.
Okay, I ate breakfast, so "ate"is an irregular past tense verb.
I drove to work, "drove"is the past tense of
"drive", it's a verycommon irregular verb.
I saw my friend, "saw"is another example.
So, as you can see, we use themall the time in our everyday routines.
So, try to write aboutyour own routine and
try to use as manyirregular past tense verbs
You can even share things from yourroutine in the comments section below.
Tell me about your day and try touse some irregular past tense verbs.
So, I want to say, truly, I am sorryabout English because I know it's hard.
There's the regular verbs,there's the irregular verbs.
So, I'm sorry Englishgrammar can be complicated,
but when you learnsomething in English, it's
And the good news is irregular verbs, youwill hear them again and again and again,
so once you memorize them,your English will really improve.
And remember, the best way tolearn something is to test yourself.
So, you can visit www.engvid.comand take my test on irregular verbs.
Make sure that you memorizethese ones and practice using them.
You can alsosubscribe to my channel.
I have many differentvideos on topics related to
English, like grammar,pronunciation, listening,
So, thank you so much forwatching, and until next time, take care.