Irregular English Verbs 👉 Past Participle Form | Common Grammar Mistakes

Lesson Overview

Lesson Summary

I created this lesson to help you REVIEW irregular English verb forms. Knowing these different verb forms is crucial to using tenses correctly – especially the perfect tenses!

Video Transcript

Hello, I’m Emma from mmmEnglish! My students are always complaining about irregular English verbs.

How can I learn them?
What are the rules?!

I’m not going to lie, they are tough!

be
do
have
go
come
say
take
get
make
see

There are fewer irregular verbs than there are regular verbs. But these irregular verbs are very, very common verbs. They’re used more often than other regular verbs. So if you’ve been telling yourself that you don’t need to worry about irregular verbs… Get your head out of the clouds! Stop dreaming!

You need to learn how to use these important English verbs … Automatically.

In this lesson, I’m going to test your knowledge of past tense irregular verbs, to train you to think of them instantly! So, get ready! You need to be thinking quickly! Pay attention.

On the screen, you’ll see a verb appear in the present tense: eat
Then, you’ll see the past simple tense: ate
And the past participle: eaten

But this is a speed test! So you need to try and beat me to it! Answer, out loud before I do and then…. You can tell your friends that you beat your teacher in an irregular verb test!

Ready? Let’s get started!

Infinitive	Past Simple	Past Participle
become	became	become
bring	brought	brought
forget	forgot	forgotten
choose	chose	chosen
find	found	found
come	came	come
drive	drove	driven
fall	fell	fallen
feel	felt	felt
buy	bought	bought
fly	flew	flown
be	was/were	been
know	knew	known
get	got	gotten (American English) / got (British English)
wear	wore	worn
tear	tore	torn
have	had	had
swim	swam	swum
keep	kept	kept
go	went	gone / been (*see note below table)
teach	taught	taught
sleep	slept	slept
lend	lent	lent
stand	stood	stood
pay	paid	paid
let	let	let
lose	lost	lost
sing	sang	sung
meet	met	met
begin	began	begun
put	put	put
read	read	read
say	said	said
make	made	made
sell	sold	sold
think	thought	thought
drink	drank	drunk
send	sent	sent
leave	left	left
sit	sat	sat
speak	spoke	spoken
write	wrote	written
take	took	taken
lie	lied	lied (not telling the truth)
lie	lay	lain
smell	smelled (more common) / smelt (British English)	smelled / smelt
give	gave	given
hear	heard	heard
tell	told	told
see	saw	seen
understand	understood	understood
do	did	done

**The main difference between been and gone:
That could be a little tricky to explain but you use “been” and “gone” for different reasons. If you go somewhere else, to another country, to a friend’s house, then you have gone from the original place – maybe your house. But if you have been, then you have gone but you’ve also come back to the original place.

Phew! How did you go? I’m sure there were quite a few that you know and that you got right! But there were probably a few that tested your memory. Maybe you haven’t used them in a little while! So it’s a good idea to jog your memory.

But don’t worry about it if you didn’t get them all right! Use this video to test and build your knowledge of these verbs. Go back to the start of the video and practise. Use this video to test and build your knowledge of these verbs. Go back to the start of the video and practise again and again and again, until you have them all memorised!

Which irregular verbs do you find most difficult to use and remember? Share them in the comments under this video!

And don’t forget that there are a bunch of irregular verbs that are only irregular because they don’t actually change in different tenses! They’re always the same – there’s only one form. For example:

bet
cut
hit
hurt
let
put (we spoke about those just before)
quit
read and read (the spelling is the same but the pronunciation’s different)
set
shut
spread

For those of you who are feeling up for the challenge…. Then download this worksheet up here to practise using these verbs in different tenses!

Well, that’s it for this mini-training lesson! I’m sure that you must feel great about reviewing and practising how to use these verbs in English, so that you can speak more fluently, confidently and automatically in English!

Now, check out this extra training that I prepared about the present perfect tense and practise using the past participle form in this tense. There’s also another playlist right here with more mmmEnglish lessons!