You may notice your child’s language sounds immature compared to peers. Sometimes this is related to poor grammar, particularly around the use of verbs (action words) and past tense verbs. For example, your child may say something like ‘Mummy, I eated my dinner all up.’ It’s worth knowing how to help your child take the next step with this.
A verb is an action or being word (e.g. sit, talk, think, feel). A verb tense tells us when the action or state happened: present, past and future.
When thinking of the past tense, there are two main types of words – regular past tense and irregular past tense.
Regular past tense verbs are action words that end with -ed (or -ied if the verb has a ‘y’ on the end):
- walk – walked
- study – studied
- cry – cried
- jump – jumped
Irregular past tense verbs are action words that don’t end in this ‘regular’ -ed way. I couldn’t put a regular -ed ending on ‘eat’ and say “I eated my dinner” … a different change happens to make it past tense. Usually there is a vowel change in the word to make it past tense:
- eat – ate
- drive – drove
- forget – forgot
- swim – swam
- pay – paid
The most commonly used verbs are irregular. How often does your child in a day use: be, have, do, say, make, go, take, come, see, get*? They are all irregular verbs! This makes irregular verbs an important area to teach for all children, especially those with a language delay or difficulty.
Here are a few ideas to teach past tense verbs:
Recasting
When you hear your child make errors in their talking, you can correct them by saying it back correctly in a conversational way. Child: He swimmed so fast! You: He did! He swam fast!
This type of modeling is called recasting. Recasting is best done naturally as opportunities arise when a child says something incorrectly. You may be able to repeat your recasting and tell a little story. For example: “He swam so fast he looked like he might win the race. He swam and swam and swam (add actions if you like!) but someone else swam faster and won” (five repetitions of swam!). You don’t need to ask your child to repeat you correctly, but they will hear your model and may even say it correctly after you by choice.
Comment
When you are talking in the day, or reading a story, you may notice that you have used an irregular verb. You could make a comment about it and how it’s an interesting word. “Hey, I said ‘he swam fast’, I didn’t say ‘he swimmed fast’ because that wouldn’t sound quite right…it’s crazy how we say swim, swims, swimming and then ‘swam’ for something that happened”.
Pictures
There are lots of action pictures online, in storybooks, signs, and magazines. You can talk about what the characters are doing. Then, cover the picture and ask what the character did! The answer becomes past tense. It’s ok for some answers to have regular past tense and others irregular past tense – it helps to figure out which is which.
Charades
Act something out and have your family guess what you are doing. Then talk about what you did. They might guess you are reading, swimming, eating, catching a ball…all of these turn into irregular past tense words (read, swam, ate, caught).
Some children change the sentence rather than using the irregular or regular forms of the verb. For example, they might say “she had jumped over the fence”, “I was swimming”. Although this is grammatically correct, we want them to understand how to change the verb to mark the tense so you can lead the sentence for them to finish off: “She j…..” (jumped), “you sw….” (swam). If your child doesn’t finish it off, you can finish it off and, in that way, you are giving a good model.
Find It
A fun game to play uses everyday objects that you can link to irregular verbs. Put a selection of objects in a bag you can’t see through (a pillow case works well). Then take turns to pull out an object, think of the action word it links to and then put it into the past tense. Objects such as goggles for ‘swam’ or ‘dove’ or ‘wore’, stickers for ‘stuck’, glove for ‘wore’, bubbles for ‘blew’, a fork for ‘ate’, a cup for drank – so many possibilities!
If you feel like you need more help with past tense verbs, don’t hesitate to get in touch. It’s what I’m here for, and I’m happy to help.
(*From Francis, N. & Kucera, H. (1982) Frequency analysis of English usage: Lexicon and grammar. Boston: Houghton Mifflin)