Irregular Verb Resources

Getting Started with Irregular Verbs

With almost 200 irregular verbs, it will take any serious student time to learn them all. Even though it is important to master regular verbs, students should also begin to memorize irregular conjugations.

Most of the differences in irregular verbs take place in the simple past and past participle tenses. Here are some examples of both:

Infinitive	Simple Past	Past Participle
bend	bent	bent
buy	bought	bought
cut	cut	cut
fall	fell	fallen
sleep	slept	slept
throw	threw	thrown

Because there are so many irregular verbs, it will take time for students to learn them all. To help them avoid overwhelm, take advantage of the resources provided above.

Fill in the blank worksheets make great practice in learning irregular verbs. Ask your students to complete exercises that begin with a verb in the infinitive or present tense, and ask the student to re-write each verb in the simple past or past participle. For example:

• Tommy rides his bike. → Tommy rode his bike.
• Jane eats cake. → Jane ate cake.

If students practice irregular verb use, they will soon learn the verbs they use and hear most frequently. One exercise idea is to have your students describe one or two things they did the night before during the first few minutes of each class. Your students should be able to employ the simple present tense with common verbs such as sleep and eat, and will soon branch out to more irregular verbs such as buy and run.