English Irregular Verbs: How to Learn Them

Almost everyone learning English has to tackle irregular verbs: without them you cannot form the past tense or many other structures. Below is what these verbs are, which forms they have, which groups make them easier to remember and how to avoid mixing them up.

What Irregular Verbs Are

A regular verb simply adds -ed in its second and third forms: play, played, played. Irregular verbs have their own forms: go, went, gone. Everyday English uses about two hundred of them, including the most common ones, since all twelve most frequent English verbs are irregular. Most come from Germanic roots, and many change their vowel from form to form: sing, sang, sung.

The Three Forms

• The first is the base form: see.
• The second is the past tense: I saw.
• The third is the past participle: I have seen, it was seen. It is used in the perfect tenses and in the passive voice.

Learning by Groups

• All three forms are identical: cut, cut, cut; put, put, put; let, let, let.
• The second and third forms match: buy, bought, bought; teach, taught, taught; make, made, made.
• The vowel changes: sing, sang, sung; drink, drank, drunk; begin, began, begun.
• The third form ends in -n: give, gave, given; ride, rode, ridden.
• The first and third forms match: come, came, come; run, ran, run.
• Special cases are easiest to learn separately: be, was/were, been; go, went, gone; do, did, done.

How to Learn Them

• Learn by group rather than alphabetically, since similar verbs stick together.
• Take five to ten verbs a day and review them with spaced repetition flashcards.
• Memorize the forms in short sentences: I went home. I have gone home.
• Say them out loud to lock in the pronunciation too.

Common Mistakes

• Using the second form instead of the third: I have went instead of I have gone.
• Using the past tense after did: did went instead of did go, since did takes the base form.
• Adding -ed to an irregular verb: goed, buyed.

How to build your grammar study online is covered in English Grammar Online: How to Master It, and how to grow your vocabulary in How to Build Your English Vocabulary Online.

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