Common irregular past tense verbs  

These can be used with activities sheets from www.commtap.org including:

• make phrases in past tense using irregular verbs 1
• make phrases in past tense using irregular verbs 2

Some common irregular past tense verbs for use in the above activities

See below if you are not sure what an irregular past tense verb is.

• blow/blew (e.g. “When it’s my birthday, I blow the candles out on my cake”, “Yesterday, I blew my candles out”);
• cut/cut;
• catch/caught;
• dig/dug;
• draw/drew;
• drink/drank;
• drive/drove;
• eat/ate;
• feed/fed;
• give/gave;
• hang/hung;
• hold/held;
• hit/hit;
• light/lit;
• lie/lay or laid;
• read/read;
• ride/rode;
• ring/rang;
• run/ran;
• shoot/shot;
• sing/sang;
• sit/sat;
• slide/slid;
• stand/stood;
• swim/swam;
• swing/swung;
• tear/tore;
• write/wrote.

What is an irregular past tense verb?

Regular past tense verbs are verbs (action words) which we can add “ed” to the end to make a past tense. For example, “walk” is regular in the past tense, because you can add “ed” to it to make the past (“I walked”).

There are many verbs (“irregular” past tense verbs) which don’t follow this pattern, for example you don’t say “I swimmed yesterday” but “I swam yesterday”. Some verbs are the same in the past as in the present, for example “When I have cake, I usually cut myself a small piece” (simple present tense), “Yesterday, I cut myself a large piece” (simple past tense). Sometimes the spelling of the verb is the same, but the sound of the word is different: “At the moment, I read story books every day” (simple present), “Last week I read a magazine”.