Regular verbs add -ed to make the past tense: play, played; jump, jumped; smile, smiled.
Irregular verbs do not follow the rule. They change in their own way: go, went; see, saw; run, ran; eat, ate; write, wrote; catch, caught. You need to learn these by heart.
When you write a story or a recount, keep it in the past tense all the way through, unless a character is speaking.
Worked example
Change to the past: “I write a letter and I send it.”
- Write is irregular: wrote.
- Send is irregular: sent.
Answer:I wrote a letter and I sent it.
Key words
- past tense
- the form of a verb for things that already happened
- regular
- follows the -ed rule
- irregular
- changes in its own way
Practise this
New questions every time.
Common Core-referenced: L.2.1d