English Verbs: Tenses, Regular and Irregular Forms

In Short: How Do You Analyse an English Verb?

• Tense: when does the action happen — past, present, or future?
• Subject: who or what performs the action? English verbs agree with the subject only in a few forms.
• Regular verbs: the past simple and past participle usually end in -ed, as in play → played.
• Irregular verbs: the form changes in a different way, as in go → went → gone.
• Helping verbs such as be, have, do, and will help form questions, negatives, perfect forms, continuous forms, and the future.
• Use both the verb form and the sentence context. English has fewer endings than Polish, so time words and helping verbs often matter.

What Is a Verb, and How Do You Recognise One?

A verb names an action, event, or state: run, write, sleep, grow, know, be. In a sentence, the verb tells us what happens or what a person or thing is or does.

English verbs have a base form, such as read or play, and different forms used in sentences. The infinitive is often shown with to, as in to read or to play. Unlike Polish, English verbs do not normally show the speaker’s gender in their form.

How Do You Match a Verb to the Subject?

Find the subject and then choose the verb form that fits it. In the present simple, most verbs change only for he, she, or it.

In the present simple, the most important ending is -s or -es for he, she, and it: she reads, he watches. The verb be is more irregular: I am, you are, he/she/it is, we are, they are.

How Do You Recognise Past, Present and Future? Practice Table

Ask when the action happens: before now, now or generally, or after now. Here is the verb read in three basic time frames:

The future with will uses the base form for every subject: I will read, she will read, they will read. English also uses other future structures, especially be going to and the present continuous for plans.

Notice that read is irregular: its spelling stays the same in the past, but its pronunciation changes. Regular verbs such as play form the past with -ed: played. Irregular verbs such as go, write, and see need their own past forms.

What Are Regular and Irregular Verbs?

Regular verbs follow the common -ed pattern in the past simple and past participle. Irregular verbs do not follow one single ending, so it is useful to learn their forms in small families and in sentences.

Regular verbs may have spelling changes before -ed, such as stop → stopped or study → studied. Irregular verbs must be learned as words and patterns: go–went–gone, see–saw–seen, write–wrote–written.

How Do English Verb Forms Change With the Subject?

English has much less verb agreement than Polish. In the present simple, most subjects use the base form, while he, she, and it usually add -s or -es. In the past simple, most verbs use the same form for every subject; the main exception is be.

• I / you / we / they: read, play, walk,
• he / she / it: reads, plays, walks,
• regular past: played for every subject,
• be in the present: I am, he/she/it is, you/we/they are,
• be in the past: I/he/she/it was, you/we/they were.

Step-by-Step Analysis: Five Examples

1. “Emma reads comics.” — present simple, third-person singular; the -s matches she/Emma.
2. “Yesterday we played football.” — past simple; played is a regular past-tense form.
3. “Tomorrow I will read this chapter.” — future with will + base form.
4. “She has written the email.” — present perfect; written is the irregular past participle of write.
5. “Read the next paragraph.” — imperative; use the base form without a subject stated.

How Do You Practise Verbs? Exercises With Answers

Exercise 1. Identify the tense or time reference: runs, drew, will play, ate, sing, thought.

Exercise 2. Decide whether the verb is regular or irregular in the past: jumped, went, cooked, wrote.

Exercise 3. Put the verb play into the correct form:

• Yesterday Emma and Jake … football.
• Tomorrow we … chess.
• Every Saturday she … with me.

Answers:

• Exercise 1: runs — present simple; drew — past simple; will play — future with will; ate — past simple; sing — present simple with I/you/we/they; thought — past simple.
• Exercise 2: jumped — regular; went — irregular; cooked — regular; wrote — irregular.
• Exercise 3: played; will play; plays.

Ten minutes a day is enough for home practice. On day one, work on present forms; day two, past tense; day three, future forms; day four, regular and irregular verbs; day five, mix them in sentences. Your child can use a table to self-check, as in how to teach a child to study independently. Younger students can also use short online activities in verbs for Grade 3 / Year 4, where they choose or change verb forms in context.

Verb forms also help when discussing point of view in literature. Pronouns and verbs can show whether a story is told in first or third person; see narrator vs author — what is the difference?.

What Mistakes Should You Avoid?

• Confusing the past simple with the past participle. Say “I went” but “I have gone”; the participle usually needs a helping verb.
• Adding -ed to every irregular verb. The past of go is went, not “goed”; the past of write is wrote, not “writed”.
• Forgetting -s in the third-person singular. Write “She plays,” not “She play.”
• Using an inflected verb after did. In a question or negative, write “Did she go?” and “She didn’t go,” not “Did she went?”.
• Trying to translate verb endings word for word. English relies more on pronouns, helping verbs, and word order. For spelling patterns that affect verb forms, see how to learn English spelling without memorising lists.

In writing, keep the chosen narrative time frame consistent unless there is a reason to shift. Jumping randomly between “I walked” and “I walk” can make a story hard to follow. For planning longer writing, see how to teach a child to write essays independently.

Sources

• Zintegrowana Platforma Edukacyjna — Podstawa programowa: język polski, szkoła podstawowa IV–VIII (requirement for grades 4–6: the pupil recognises the forms of number, person, tense, mood and grammatical gender of the verb; version for the 2025/2026 school year).
• Zintegrowana Platforma Edukacyjna — Odmieniamy czasownik – osoby, liczby, rodzaje (personal and impersonal forms, gender in the past tense and in the compound future tense).
• Zintegrowana Platforma Edukacyjna — Aspekt i tryb czasownika (perfective verbs have no present tense, three moods, tense only in the indicative mood).
• Słownik języka polskiego PWN — Zasady pisowni: cząstki -bym, -byś, -by z osobowymi formami czasowników (written as one word in the conditional mood).