Irregular verbs for lower primary English students

An irregular verb is a verb that cannot be changed to the past tense by adding an -ed or -d to the end of the word. Knowing which verb is regular or irregular can sometimes be challenging for a P3 or P2 student.

Schools usually provide lists of irregular verbs to memorise and this is probably the fastest and most effective way to learn them. When students know the past tense and the participle of their irregular verbs by heart, teachers or parents can come up with some fun games to test students on their knowledge of irregular verbs.

Why is it important to learn the past tense and participle of irregular verbs well in lower primary?

Irregular verbs are often set for many sections of Paper 2

Irregular verbs are tested in the Grammar MCQ sections from P2 – P4. When students reach the P5 year, they will realise that transforming irregular verbs is tested in many other components of Paper 2 aside from Grammar MCQ. They can be found in Reported Speech, Active and Passive and Conditionals, etc in the Synthesis & Transformation section. Transforming irregular verbs is also tested in the Editing section where students need to correct the Grammatical mistake in the passage. Irregular verbs may also appear in the Cloze section where students need to fill in the blank with their own words.

Building a strong grammatical foundation in lower primary is important for upper primary

The lower primary years are there to ensure that students are prepared for their PSLE year. While the objective for lower primary learning has been revised to allow for more play and fun learning (which are also essential) what is being tested in the PSLE papers remain the same or have become even more difficult. Thus, making sure that the students are building a strong foundation for the English Language in the lower primary years is essential.

In the P5 year, students are introduced to Conditionals, Passive, Phrasal Verbs, and Reported Speech. These grammatical structures are far more complicated and tricky. Those students who already have a strong grammatical foundation may not automatically score full marks on the first try but will definitely perfect these structures faster than those students who are struggling to relearn the grammatical rules taught in lower primary.

It is also important to review and revise on a yearly basis, adding on the previous lists so that the student’s knowledge expands. This is why at TF, we review our lists of Irregular verbs yearly in all our levels. Below is our irregular verb list for our P3 students.

List of irregular verbs for P3 students

V1 Base Form	V 2 Past Simple	V3 Past Participle
be (is, are, am)	was, were	been
beat	beat	beaten
become	became	become
begin	began	begun
bend	bent	bent
bite	bit	bitten
blow	blew	blown
break	broke	broken
bring	brought	brought
build	built	built
burn	burnt	burnt
catch	caught	caught
choose	chose	chosen
dig	dug	dug
do	did	done
dream	dreamt	dreamt
drive	drove	driven
drink	drank	drunk
eat	ate	eaten
fall	fell	fallen
find	found	found
fly	flew	flown
forget	forgot	forgotten
forgive	forgave	forgiven
freeze	froze	frozen
get	got	gotten
give	gave	given

By the time P6 comes around, we expect our students to make very few grammatical mistakes. If there is a need to, then we will add on extra grammatical ‘drilling’ exercises. Lately, I have seen the verb ‘spread’ changed to the past tense ‘spreaded’ in a few P5 and P6 compositions.

This has prompted me to review with my P5 & P6 students, irregular verbs again and to create a separate list of Irregular verbs that remain the same in the past tense. I hope that you have found this post and lists uselful.

V1 Base Form	V 2 Past Simple	V3 Past Participle
bet	bet	bet
burst	burst	burst
cost	cost	cost
cut	cut	cut
hit	hit	hit
hurt	hurt	hurt
let	let	let
put	put	put
quit	quit	quit
set	set	set
shut	shut	shut
split	split	split
spread	spread	spread