Students will hear others using these words normally. They often become automatic by the time students enter middle school because irregular verbs are often used in natural speech.

The best way to approach learning these forms of verbs is to memorize them. These types of words are known as strong words because they push the action to the maximum very quickly. This results in the spelling being out of whack, to some extent, require students to memorize a pattern of words. Most simple past verbs just end in the letter combination -ed, but not when it comes to the irregulars. Most verbs that are formed in the past tense end in one of three ways -d, -ed, or -ied. Some verbs however, particularly those that end with ‘sh’, ‘ss’ or ‘y’ are formed differently for the third-person singular forms (‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘it’).Verbs that do not play by the standard spelling rules but are commonly found in works are called irregular verbs. These two rules work perfectly for the majority of academic verbs:Īccept, achieve, adapt, advance, affect, allocate, allow, alter, analyse, appear, argue, arise, assert, associate, assist, assume, attempt, avoid, base, benefit, cause, choose, cite, claim, combine, compare, compete, concentrate, conclude, conduct, connect, consider, consist, constitute, construct, contrast, contribute, correspond, decline, define, demonstrate, depend, describe, design, determine, develop, differ, display, effect, eliminate, emerge, enable, encounter, encourage, enhance, ensure, evaluate, evolve, examine, exceed, expand, explain, facilitate, favour, form, formulate, function, generate, highlight, illustrate, improve, include, increase, indicate, influence, interpret, introduce, investigate, involve, isolate, lead, limit, locate, maintain, measure, neglect, note, obtain, occur, outline, overcome, participate, perceive, predict, present, prevent, produce, prove, provide, pursue, quote, receive, reduce, reflect, regard, reinforce, relate, remain, remove, replace, report, represent, reproduce, require, resolve, respond, restrict, result, retain, reveal, rise, select, separate, show, solve, state, strengthen, submit, suggest, summarise, support, tend, transform, treat, undermine, undertake For third-person singular subjects (‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘it’), add the suffix ‘-s’ to the end of the verb to demonstrate the present tense.

For first– and second-person singular subjects (‘I’, ‘you’ and ‘we’) and third-person plural subjects (‘they’), do not make any changes to the verb.

There are two rules that students can follow: How do I conjugate present-tense verbs?įor the most part, verbs in English are conjugated (formed) for the present in a very consistent way.

Irregular verbs present and past tense