Irregular verbs game: past simple and past participle
A game for learning English irregular verbs without chanting the list. You get the infinitive and build the past simple and the past participle from tiles, which include the made-up regular forms (goed, buyed) and the ones people genuinely mix up (bought and brought, thought and taught). In other rounds you group verbs by pattern, type them letter by letter and put each form in the right sentence: yesterday takes the past simple; after have comes the past participle. Over 100 verbs across three levels, from go-went-gone to seek-sought-sought.
English · Primary, Secondary, Sixth Form
Irregular verbs are not 100 separate cases: cut-cut-cut has three identical forms, buy-bought-bought repeats the past in the participle, go-went-gone has three different ones and come-came-come goes back to the infinitive. Sorting them into groups is the quickest way to learn them.
The wrong tiles are not random: the invented regular form (catched, teached), the neighbouring verb (bought for brought) and the other tense (went where gone belongs). They are exactly the errors corrected most often in class.
Knowing that the participle of eat is eaten is not enough if you then write “I have ate”. The sentence rounds ask which form goes with yesterday and which with have, which is what past simple and present perfect tests check.
"The verb is “bring”. The tiles are brought, bought, bringed and brang. The student puts bought in the past simple, realises it is the past of buy, swaps it for brought and puts brought in the participle as well."
Prefer to learn without screens? Try this analogue version:
Split a sheet into four columns: A-A-A, A-B-B, A-B-C and A-B-A.
Write each verb from your list in its column with its three forms.
Cover the past and the participle and say them aloud, column by column.
Write two sentences for each A-B-C verb: one with yesterday and one with have.
If you like Irregular Verbs, these activities work similar skills:
Ten questions with the same mechanics, untimed and marked, on three levels.
Build past simple, present perfect and passive sentences from pieces.
Put the words of an English sentence in the right order.
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