You can create a deck of cards with the translation of an irregular verb on one side and its three forms on the other side. This is by far the most enjoyable strategy both for kids and adults. This way you will acquire new irregular verbs naturally and won’t need to parrot them like the list of 80 most frequent irregular verbs. Make a mental note and add them to some existing groups. Then I got hungry and thought of lunch….” 4) Spot irregular verbs while readingĪs you read articles or books, you can spot different less common irregular verbs. Suddenly I saw a wolf and fought with it for three hours.
I bought a bottle of water and brought a couple of sandwiches to have a picnic. You can start your story like a fairy tale, e.g. On the contrary, the more phantasy you use, the better your mind will remember the verbs because you will use the right hemisphere of your brain (responsible for creativity). Your story should not be realistic at all. That’s a very powerful strategy to activate irregular verbs. Later, you can add another hundred of irregular verbs gradually. If you study 10 verbs from this list every day, it will take you only 8 days to learn the whole list. There are about 80 irregular verbs in my short list of the most frequent verbs, that will be perfectly enough for the beginning. Some verbs still do not fall into any group and should be memorised separately, for instance, do-did-done or hear-heard-heard. Therefore, I compiled another list of irregular verbs, grouped by patterns. Personally, I believe that this order makes no sense because you will never use irregular verbs in alphabetic order in real life. In most grammar textbooks, irregular verbs are grouped alphabetically. blow-blew-blown, grow-grew-grown, flow-flew-flown or another series: cut-cut-cut, set-set-set, put-put-put. 2) Group verbs by patternsĪlthough irregular verbs are unpredictable, you can still find some patterns, e.g. Next, I think of a couple of sentences to translate, using different tenses to make sure that they can use the forms they learnt. To test the students’ knowledge, I often give them verbs in Russian, and they pronounce all the three forms. That way he would be able to use irregular verbs in his speech and writing. That was simply unbelievable for me! The boy learnt twenty verbs and didn’t know what they meant! What’s the reason for such study? I smiled and explained to him that, first of all, he needed to understand very well the meaning of each verb and only then memorise the forms.
BRITISH ENGLISH IRREGULAR VERBS LIST TO LEARN HOW TO
I don’t know how to translate this word into English”. He said thoughtfully, “You know, our teacher always pronounced a verb in English and we spoke out the forms. When I asked him to pronounce three forms of the verb “to build”, saying the verb itself in Russian, the task took him by surprise. One of my students, a schoolboy, proudly told me that he had learnt twenty new English irregular verbs from my list. 1) Always learn irregular verbs with translation As Steven Pinker wrote in his article, “ Every time we use an irregular verb, we are continuing a game of Broken Telephone that has gone on for more than five thousand years”.Īs people need to memorise irregular verbs anyway, you can benefit from some strategies how to make this process effective, simple and enjoyable. On the downside, you can’t have a clear rule for every irregular verb because they came from Old English and were formed chaotically. However, a lot of irregular verbs belong to frequent vocabulary and are just as important as bricks and mortar for a house.Ī good news is that you don’t need to learn all the 470 irregular verbs, only 180 verbs are used frequently. Many people simply hate those long tables with irregular verbs that all the schoolchildren used to parrot during English lessons. Every second English learner has some issues with irregular verbs.
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