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Irregular verbs are not as easy to learn as regular ones, but it’s not that hard, either. Students are often scared at the variety of irregular verbs the English language has, and learning them can be challenging – but fun. One thing is true, though: you’ll have to learn them by heart. There have been systems invented to learn irregular verbs easier by ESL programs, but actually the best way is to remember the verbs, by using them, and applying them to different situations. Let’s take a look at some common -and not so common- irregular verbs in English:

be – was/were – been

become – became – become

begin – began – begun

break – broke – broken

bring – brought – brought

build – built – built

buy – bought – bought

come – came – come

cost – cost – cost

cut – cut – cut

do – did – done

drink – drank – drunk

eat – ate – eaten

find – found – found

fly – flew – flown

get – got – gotten/got

give – gave – given

go – went – gone

have – had – had

keep – kept – kept

know – knew – known

leave – left – left

make – made – made

meet – met – met

pay – paid – paid

put – put – put

read – read – read

say – said – said

see – saw – seen

sell – sold – sold

send – sent – sent

speak – spoke – spoken

spend – spent – spent

take – took – taken

teach – taught – taught

tell – told – told

think – thought – thought

These are very frequent verbs, and if you take a close look you’ll see that the past participle (third column) often repeats the past form. For example:

• I make my bed every day.
• I made my bed yesterday.
• I have made my bed before!

Others, however, suffer a change when used in part participle:

• I speak with my mother often.
• I spoke with my mother last Friday.
• I have recently spoken to my mother.

As with regular verbs, irregular ones are used with different auxiliaries to form tenses. That way, using has or have plus the past participle of a verb will form the present perfect tense:

• She has taught me a lot about life.

Using had plus past participle forms the past perfect tense:

• They had always thought her illness could be reverted.

Will is also an auxiliary that forms the future tense. Will have plus a past participle will form the future perfect tense:

• Tomorrow will be a nice day. (Simple Future)
• By Friday, I will have finished my assignments (Future Perfect)

For a full list of irregular verbs and exercises you can visit this complete website. To understand fully the way irregular verbs are constructed, the best way is to study and use them, so only practice can lead you to success in this sense. So go ahead, use, study and learn them!

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When starting to learn English at an ESL school, you are not starting from scratch; you already know the concepts from your mother tongue. You just need to change your habits and learn to express those concepts in different arrangements and new sentences.

Non-English speakers are often puzzled by the American English pronunciation of the letter ‘t’. Sometimes it sounds clearly like a /t/ in the word determine), but other times it sounds almost like a /d/.

There are a lot of technical descriptions of this phenomenon, and linguists, phoneticians and language teachers can have lively conversations and debates about how best to describe it. For most learners, however, it helps to know a few simple facts about what happens to the /t/ sound in American English pronunciation.

Let’s take a look at two words which sound almost alike when spoken by an American speaker of English.

ladder – latter

Ladder is an object used for climbing, and latter is used to refer to the second of two previously mentioned items. There spelling and meanings are different, but in American English pronunciation, the two words sound the same.

What is happening here? First, it’s important to understand the stress patterns in the words. Both words are stressed on the first syllable. In American English pronunciation, when a stressed syllable occurs before the letter ‘t’, the /t/ sound is pronounced with a sound similar to a /d/. This happens only when the stressed vowel is followed directly by the ‘t’. If a consonant comes between the vowel and the ‘t’, the ‘t’ keeps its regular pronunciation. For example, in the word “lasting”, the first syllable is stressed, but there is an ’s’ between the stressed vowel and the ‘t’, so you clearly hear the /t/ sound.

Here are some examples:

words with a /d/ sound

butter

better

sitter

greater

hated

words with a /t/ sound

deter

fester

hasty

pasted

faster

There are other ways in which the ‘t’ can be pronounced differently in American English pronunciation. But for now, see how many examples of the /d/ phenomenon you can hear in the English around you.

Mary Gillespie, ESL Teacher and Owner of the Online ESL Tutoring Service At Home with English, PronouncePro American English Pronunciation Writing Staff.