Regular Verbs
If you have studied English grammar, you know that there are regular verbs and irregular verbs.Verb Tenses
Verb tenses tell us about the time that the verb occurs.
Verbs have three different basic or simple times that they could have taken place.
These three times are called the simple tenses.
1. Past Tense: These verbs take place in the past.
2. Present Tense: These verbs take place in the present.
3. Future Tense: These verbs will take place in the future.
Past tense and present tense are the two tenses that are important for this discussion, so those are the two that we are going to focus on.
Here are some examples of present and past tense verbs.
Do you notice a pattern in how they are formed?
| Present Tense | Past Tense |
| learn | learned |
| walk | walked |
| move | moved |
| work | worked |
| love | loved |
| play | played |
Regular Verbs
I certainly hope so! You should have noticed that all of the past tense verbs above simply added a -d or -ed to the present tense form of the verb.
Well, the definition of a regular verb is a verb that adds -d or -ed to the present tense form to make the past tense form.
That's it!
| Present Tense | + -d or -ed |  | Past Tense |
| learn | + -ed | | learned |
| walk | + -ed | | walked |
| move | + -d | | moved |
| work | + -ed | | worked |
| love | + -d | | loved |
| play | + -ed | | played |
They follow a pattern. They do the same thing every time they are in the past tense, so we say that they are regular.
Okay... so what are irregular verbs?
Irregular Verbs
Use what you learned above to figure out what an irregular verb is.
If I looked inside your head right now, I'm sure that I would gain access to this thought process:
If a regular verb adds -d or -ed to the present tense form when making the past tense, I'll bet that an irregular verb does not do that!
Great! You're right. Here is a formal definition for you.
Irregular verbs are verbs that don't add -d or -ed to the present tense form when making the past tense.
This makes them wacky, unpredictable little things.
Here are some irregular verbs.
| Present Tense | Past Tense |
| sing | sang |
| take | took |
| read | read |
| drive | drove |
| fly | flew |
