More Irregular Verb Practice In This English Speaking Topic Part 2 Ep 456

Tricky Irregular Verbs Part 2 In This English Speaking Topic

Back in an English language lesson podcast in May I started talking about tricky irregular English verbs, and we used this to help with your English-speaking practice. Today’s podcast is a follow up to that English lesson with more English-speaking practice to help you with this area of English that some English language learners can find difficult.

In last weeks podcast introduction ( Podcast episode 455 ) I talked about comprehensible input which is a key component of learning a language through acquisition. Now obviously input is great, understanding another language is crucial but ultimately you're doing this so you can speak and write a language not just understand it right?

So building up your listening and comprehension of a new language helps to build a new language model in your brain targeting the new language. I mentioned that one of the cool parts of learning a language in this way is that once you have built your listening language model, it can be reversed and all that listening work suddenly becomes available for output i.e. a tool for speaking and writing in the new target language - English in our case.

To help swap this new language model form input to output, you are going to need to do two things.

• Start mimicking what you hear and speaking out loud. This is to help build up the physical part of speaking in a new language, literally using muscles in your throat, mouth and face that are needed for the new language. So in our speaking English lessons we create content that we expect you to speak out aloud and copy what I’m saying as you listen.

• Turn the listening ideas process around. The listening (input) model is taking other people’s ideas and concepts and turning them into something you understand. Now you need to take your ideas and concepts and turn them into language (from the listening model you have built in your brain). You can practice doing this by thinking of something you want to communicate and then write this down on paper in English.

Doing these two things will help reverse your input language model into and output language model.

Most Unusual Words:

Hurdle
Obstacle
Irregular
Cinema
Kettle
Repetition
Mimicking
Crucial

Most common 3 word phrases:

Listen To The Audio Lesson Now

Transcript: More Irregular Verb Practice In This English Speaking Topic Part 2

Hi there and welcome to this podcast from Adept English. Would you like to be able to speak English easily and fluently, without having to think about it? Well, listening to lots of English speaking, means that English grammar will eventually become automatic for you – your brain will serve up the correct English, without you even thinking about it.

That’s our goal – to help you speak English fluently, automatically, more like a native speaker, we help you to improve your speaking skills.

Irregular verbs in English in the past tense

So we did some practice a few weeks ago on irregular verbs. Verbs can sometimes be one of the obstacles that English language learners face – an ‘obstacle’, OBSTACLE is ‘something in the way’, ‘something you have to get over’. In a running race, there may be ‘hurdles’, barriers you have to jump over – that’s HURDLE – just like in the Olympic Games.

Team GB has Cindy Sember and Tiffany Porter in Tokyo at the moment. They are sisters who were born in the USA, but who compete for Great Britain in the 100 metres hurdle race. How do they get to be so good at jumping over hurdles? Well practice, of course. And we use the term ‘hurdle’ in a literal sense of the 100m hurdles – but we also use this word idiomatically to refer to something that’s difficult, something you have to overcome.

More Irregular Verb Practice In This English Speaking Topic Part 2 Ep 456 Article Image

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A photograph of a professional sprinter jumping over a hurdle. We help you jump over English language hurdles in this English speaking practice topic.

©️ Adept English 2021

So irregular verbs are a bit like hurdles. So this is as though we’re practising for a hurdle race. Let’s purposefully practise what’s difficult. Let’s treat some irregular verbs like a hurdling practice! If you like English speaking practice tips then number one tip is that just like those hurdlers in the Olympic Games, you can achieve amazing things through practice.

First of all, as before a reminder, of what regular verbs and their regular past tenses are like. So:-

• The verb ‘to close’ – simple past tense ‘I closed the window’, perfect tense ‘I have closed the window’
• The verb ‘to start’ – simple past tense ‘I started to speak’, perfect tense ‘I have started to speak’.
• The verb ‘to play’ – simple past tense ‘I played golf’, perfect tense ‘I have played golf’.

So the regular ones aren’t difficult, with their ED endings. The simple past and the past participle are the same and follow the simple rules in English for the past tense. But let’s get on with some irregular verbs in the past tense, let’s do the ones that might present a hurdle.

Test your knowledge of common verbs, which are irregular in the past tense

So how about I give you some sentences in the future tense and I’ll indicate this by using the adverb ‘Tomorrow’ at the start of each sentence. So you can have a go at repeating the sentence, but instead of ‘Tomorrow’, it’s as though time’s moved on and you’re now describing the same action in the past. So your sentence will have the same meaning, it’s just that it will start with the word ‘Yesterday’ and you’ll put the verbs into the past tense. If I do number one for you, you might understand what I mean. So...

1. Tomorrow I will hear the birds singing and I will see them through my window. And you’re going to say:-

"Yesterday I heard the birds singing and I saw them through my window."

So you repeat the sentence that I say, except that where I’ve said ‘tomorrow’, you say ‘yesterday’ and then you need to change the verbs into the past tense – and you’ll find that they’re all irregular ones, so it’ll be good practice for you. OK? Here goes with the rest…..

2. Tomorrow I will understand for the first time how difficult it is to rock climb.
3. Tomorrow I will make dinner and you will put on the kettle to make the tea.
4. Tomorrow we will shut the shop and take a taxi to the cinema.
5. Tomorrow he will wake up and think he is in heaven!
6. Tomorrow he will fly to Belgium and eat a nice meal in Antwerp.
7. Tomorrow my sister will choose a new dress and buy it there and then.
8. Tomorrow we will come to your house and bring some eggs.
9. Tomorrow I will give you a hand and we will build the wall together.
10. Tomorrow I will leave the house for the first time and meet a friend for lunch.

Video

A reminder of The Five Hundred Most Common Words Course

OK. How was that? If you found it easy great – the answers are coming in a minute. And if not, you might want to stop this podcast right here and go back and have another listen to the questions, before I give you the answers. But first of all, just a reminder that you can buy our 500 Most Common Words in English Course, on our website at adeptenglish.com.

Boost Your Learning With Adept English

This course is the only one of its type – and it will ensure that you know the most common 500 words in English – it’s really valuable as a learning resource. It’s a ‘listen and learn’ course, just like the podcasts. And it will make sure that a lot of the words in any English language that you listen to – are already familiar to you.

You’ll be able to follow the meaning of any English language much better, if you’re secure in your knowledge of the most common words and this will also help your English speaking.

Answers to the quiz - how did you do?

Anyway, back to the quiz. Here are the answers – for you to practise with. I’ll say the ‘Tomorrow’ sentence again – and then I’ll fill in with the correct past tenses for these irregular verbs in the ‘Yesterday’ sentence. It will help you hear these irregular verbs being used - and hearing them over and over makes your remembering them much more automatic. I’ll do number one again, just for practice.

1. Tomorrow I will hear the birds singing and I will see them through my window.
   • Yesterday I heard the birds singing and I saw them through my window.
2. Tomorrow I will understand for the first time how difficult it is to rock climb.
   • Yesterday I understood for the first time how difficult it is to rock climb.

Notice that ‘how difficult it is to rock climb’ stays in the present tense – that’s because it’s a ‘general comment’ on rock climbing.

3. Tomorrow I will make dinner and you will put on the kettle to make the tea.
   • Yesterday I made dinner and you put on the kettle to make the tea.

Notice that the verb ‘to put’ is unusual in the past tense because it stays the same!

4. Tomorrow we will shut the shop and take a taxi to the cinema.
   • Yesterday we shut the shop and took a taxi to the cinema.

You could also say ‘Tomorrow we will shut the shop and we will take a taxi to the cinema’ and so the yesterday sentence would be ‘Yesterday we shut the shop and we took a taxi to the cinema’. But usually we would miss out the 2nd ‘we will’ – it’s implied – and that’s how I’m going to do the rest of the sentences. Notice also that ‘to shut’ is rather like ‘to put’ – it stays the same in the simple past tense.

5. Tomorrow he will wake up and think he is in heaven!
   • Yesterday he woke up and thought he was in heaven!
6. Tomorrow he will fly to Belgium and eat a nice meal in Antwerp.
   • Yesterday he flew to Belgium and ate a nice meal in Antwerp.
7. Tomorrow my sister will choose a new dress and buy it there and then.
   • Yesterday my sister chose a new dress and bought it there and then.
8. Tomorrow we will come to your house and bring some eggs.
   • Yesterday we came to your house and brought some eggs.
9. Tomorrow I will give you a hand and we will build the wall together.
   • Yesterday I gave you a hand and we built the wall together.
10. Tomorrow I will leave the house for the first time and meet a friend for lunch.

• Yesterday I left the house for the first time and met a friend for lunch.

Download The Podcast Audio & Transcript

Listen again to help you remember

So did you find that difficult or easy? If you found it difficult, then listen to this podcast a few more times. And then a good way to improve your English speaking – leave it for a few days and then listen to the podcast again. ‘Spaced repetition’ will help you remember vocabulary better and help you move towards more advanced English speaking.

Goodbye

If you like what we’re doing and you listen on Apple Podcasts – don’t forget to page down and give us a star rating – or even better, practise your written English and give us a review on there! Or on any of the platforms where you listen to Adept English - we’ll be really happy if you do that!

Enough for now. Have a lovely day. Speak to you again soon. Goodbye.

Links

• Cindy Sember and Tiffany Porter in Tokyo
• Irregular English verbs - part 1
• English lesson - episode 455
• More English speaking lessons
• Find us on Spotify
• Read along on YouTube
• Apple Podcasts
• Google
• Most Common 500 English Words