irregular past tense

Atop a foothill of Mt Warrenheip, a mere 8km from my childhood home in Ballarat, sits Kryal Castle. Behold its magnificence!

Built in the 1970s by one Keith Ryall, the castle features a moat, a maze, stocks, an armory, mock-hangings, performing lions, jousting knights, juggling jesters and – best of all for ten year old me – a gruesome Wax Torture museum. Of all the many, kitschy and odd tourist attractions in Australia, Kryal Castle is by far the best and – outside of Ballarat and her surrounds – one of the least well-known.

I still remember the Winter’s day when Dad took us out to the Castle. In hindsight, the trip was designed to give Mum a day off. But what I remember most is how I lost my voice from talking (and shouting) so much – describing all I could see from the parapet, re-telling the jesters’ jokes, giving detailed instructions to my sister about where the bathroom was (sending her, screaming, via the Wax museum), plotting my course through the maze with a map, and negotiating with Dad about the purchase of bag upon bag of hot chips. In short, it was the perfect language work out!

When I think about young kids (and their parents) trudging guiltily to speech pathology sessions carting tatty scrapbooks stuffed with half-completed worksheets, I sometimes wonder why we make it so hard – and boring. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a time and a place for worksheets. Some children and families love them. They can be an efficient way of getting in lots of repetitions in a short time.

But the purpose of speech pathology is not to kill trees or to line the pockets of worksheet presses. It’s to improve communication skills. So why not practice those skills with actual people out in the real world?

If you’re working on early concepts, head out one morning to a zoo or farm and marvel at the big elephant or cow, the small lizard or chick, the tall giraffe or farmer, the short meercat or pony foal, the green parrot, the white lion, the furry koala, the fast dog or the noisy goat. Talk about how you got out of the house – what you did first, second, next and last. What you did before you brushed your teeth, or after you’d put the cat out.

If you’re practicing prepositions, open your front door, walk across the road, open the gate, shut it behind you, walk into the playground, jump on and off the balancing beam, swing forwards and backwards, climb up the ladder, slide down the slide, and then do it all again.

If you’re practising plurals, go to the supermarket and pick up cans of tomatoes, bunches of bananas, bags of rice, mangoes, apples and oranges. Point at pictures of cakes and chips and bottles of coke and other “sometimes food and drink”.

If irregular verbs are the name of the game, or if you’re working on narratives and recounts, rug up in front of the fire or heater and tell each other stories about your family: the time you fell off your chair at school, sleeping, and broke your arm in two places. Or the day you caught the cricket ball at the Second Test after it flew high through the air. How Dad saw Bon Jovi live at the Hordern. How Granddad ran a marathon, taught himself to drive in a paddock and fought in the War. How Grandma knew a man who blew glass into animal shapes in Venice and bought 20 butterflies back for her friends.

Take advantage of the fact you live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Catch trains and buses and ferries. Go to the beach, the park, the museum, the art gallery, the movies, the Rennaisance fair, up the coast, down the old highway, out of town and interstate.

And, as you do all of these things as a family, describe what you see to your kids like you’re calling the Melbourne Cup. Fill your family days, your outings, your roadtrips and quiet nights in with language. And encourage your kids to do the same.

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Banter Speech & Language

Banter Speech & Language is an independent firm of speech pathologists for adults and children. We help clients in our local area, including Concord, Rhodes, Strathfield and all other suburbs of Sydney’s Inner West.

Banter Speech & Language is owned and managed by David Kinnane, a Hanen- and LSVT LOUD-certified speech-language pathologist with post-graduate training in the Spalding Method for literacy, the Lidcombe and Camperdown Programs for stuttering, and Voicecraft for voice disorders. David is also a Certified PESL Instructor for accent modification.

David holds a Master of Speech Language Pathology from the University of Sydney, where he was a Dean’s Scholar. David is a Practising Member of Speech Pathology Australia and a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist (CPSP).

A direct quote from Son 2, when he was aged about 3. I think his brother had seized and re-modelled one of Son 2’s precious Duplo-Lego-Rocket sculptures and stashed the remnants in his bedroom.

At the time, I recall my wife asked me what was going on. Why was Son 2 making so many mistakes with his past tense and could I “fix him”?

(How I imagine my wife and I looked as we discussed verbs in irregular past tense form.)

As I strode to Son 1’s room to retrieve the ruined rocket, this is roughly what I told her:

1. Our son’s errors are not unusual for a 3 year old. We even have a name for it: “overgeneralistion”.

2. In modern English, most past tense verbs are made by adding “ed” to the present tense verb (e.g. walk/walked, dance/danced, jump/jumped). By 3 years of age, most kids have picked up this basic rule and it’s common for children to apply the words to all verbs at some stage of their language development (for those of you who are technically-minded, overgeneralisation past-tense use often occurs in what is known as Brown’s Stage III, which occurs at around 30-36 months for typically-developing children).

3. Unfortunately, there are a couple of hundred words – including some really common ones for little boys like held, broke, went, fell, threw, and taught – where the basic rule doesn’t apply. Most of these words are ancient, and each of the past tense forms of the words has to be rote learned to “block” the default “ed” rule.

4. If Son 2 doesn’t know the special “irregular” word, or can’t remember it, it’s natural for him to apply the add-the-ed rule. As Steven Pinker says in the Language Instinct, the same thing happens in adults with lower frequency, less well-remembered irregular forms.

Pop quiz readers: what is the correct past tense form of each of the following words: tread, strive, slay, smite and rend?

5. The “fix” is to teach Son 2 the irregular words and to make sure he hears us saying them and uses them enough to remember them. We should start with the most frequent irregular words. Trod, strove, slew/slayed, smote and rent can wait till he needs them!

6. The good news is that this tricky class of irregular past tense words is pretty much closed for new business. Almost all new verbs invented or introduced into English take the regular -ed past tense form, e.g. texted, tweeted and downloaded.

Of course, Son 2 was about 3 years old when we had that conversation. If your child is at school and still making these errors, he or she might need some help to learn the correct irregular forms.

Your speech pathologist can give you some tips and resources to help get this sorted out.

Related resources:

Image source: http://tinyurl.com/m25oh5y

Banter Speech & Language

Speech pathology homework doesn’t have to be boring

“But he holded it and broked it and then he goed away!” Why do some children speak this way?

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