Description
At around 48-54 months, typically developing children start to use regular past tense verbs, e.g. stopped, played and lifted. Although these verbs are all spelled with an “ed” at the end, the speech sounds used to signal regular past tense vary:
- Sometimes, the “ed” is pronounced as a /t/, e.g. as in “stopped”, “bumped”, “asked”, “baked”, “hopped”, “liked”, and “walked”.
- Sometimes, the “ed” is pronounced as a /d/, e.g. as in “played”, “called”, “carried”, “rolled”, “opened”, “turned”, “showed”.
- Sometimes, the “ed” is pronounced as an “ed” /əd/, e.g. as in “counted”, “lifted”, “shouted”, and “folded”.
Most people learn the past tense form of regular verbs and the pronunciation rules without needing to be taught about them. However, people learning English as an additional language and/or people with developmental language disorders sometimes don’t pick up these patterns automatically. In simple terms:
- “ed” is pronounced as /t/ when the sound before it is made without using your voice, e.g. if the base verb ends in an unvoiced sound like /p, s/ or /k/;
- “ed” is pronounced as /d/ when the sound before it is made with your voice “on”, e.g. if the base verb ends in an voiced sound like /b, z/ or /g/; and
- “ed” is pronounced as “ed” (unstressed /əd/) when the sound before it is /d/ or /t/ e.g. “dented”, “needed”, “shouted,” and “wanted”.
As is almost always the case with English, there are some exceptions! Sometimes words ended in /t/ and /d/ do NOT take /əd/ in past tense form.
This no preparation pack is designed to provide people with structured practice of some of the most high frequency exceptions to the /t/ and /d/ rule:
- shut
- hit
- held
- put
- bid
- wet
- bet
- burst
- cut
- let
- hurt
With both picture cues and orthography, this pack can be used with people of all ages.
For more irregular past tense verb workouts, see our:
- Pack 1 (was, had, did, said, made, ate, came);
- Pack 2 (took, broke, stood, spoke);
- Pack 3 (spent, sent, left, built);
- Pack 4 (knew, drew, grew, threw); and
- Pack 5 (slept, went, meant).
