Regular and irregular verbs

Past simple: Exercise 1 | Exercise 2 | Exercise 3

Past simple + past participle: Exercise 4 | Exercise 5

PDF exercises

Regular verbs exercises PDF + Key to regular verbs Changes in spelling of regular forms.

Irregular verbs exercises PDF 1 + Key with answers 1 Past simple: Fill in the missing forms. Find the past tense in the word chain.

Irregular verbs exercises PDF 2 + Key with answers 2 Past simple and past participle: Complete sentences with words in brackets. Correct mistakes.

Irregular verbs exercises PDF 3 + Key with answers 3 Past simple and past participle: Fill in the missing forms. Complete sentences.

Regular verbs list PDF

List of regular verbs PDF with spelling changes (like - liked, copy - copied, chat - chatted).

Irregular verbs list PDF

Basic irregular verbs list PDF The list of the most common verbs used in everyday English.

Full list of irregular verbs PDF The more complete list which is longer than the first one.

You can download all three regular and irregular verbs lists for free.

1. The regular past simple tense in the English language is usually formed by -ed ending (work - worked, stay - stayed). It is the same for all persons, singular and plural: I started, you started, he started, we played, they played.

The spelling rules

a) We add -d (not -ed) to the word that ends in -e. Examples: like - liked, love -loved.

b) If it ends in a consonant and -y, we change -y into -i. Examples: carry - carried, try - tried.
But: play - played, because it ends in a vowel and -y.

c) If the regular verb has only one syllable and ends in a single vowel and a consonant, we double the consonant to keep the same pronunciation. Examples: stop - stopped, fit - fitted.

The same rule applies to expressions with more syllables if the stress falls on the last syllable: ad'mit - admitted, pre'fer - preferred.
But: 'enter - entered (the stress is not on the last syllable).
In words ending in -l the consonant is always doubled after a single vowel: travel - travelled.

2. The regular past participle is the same. It is also formed by -ed ending (worked, stayed). It is used in perfect tenses and passive voice: I have started, you had started, he will have started, it was started.

There are basically three irregular verb forms in English:
1.The base form (or the bare infinitive): draw, lead, read, dream
2. The past tense (also called preterite): drew, led, read, dreamt or dreamed
3. The past participle (sometimes called perfect participle): drawn, led, read, dreamt or dreamed

As you can see from the examples above, some of the forms are completely different (draw - drew - drawn), some have a different infinitive, but the two other ones are the same (lead - led - led), some have the same spelling, but different pronunciation (read - read - read), some can be both regular and irregular (dream - dreamt/dreamed - dreamt/dreamed) and some have the same spelling and pronunciation (set - set - set).