Learning the Past Simple: Regular Verbs with -ED ✏️🕒
Understanding how to talk about the past is a big step for beginner English learners! This lesson focuses on the past simple tense of regular verbs—the ones that simply end in -ed.
In this post, students will learn how to form regular past tense verbs, pronounce -ed endings, and learn the spelling rules. With clear examples, young learners can confidently practice verbs like play → played, visit → visited, and jump → jumped.
Perfect for A1-level learners, this resource is ideal for classrooms, homework, or extra grammar support at home.
We use the past simple to talk about actions that happened in the past – like yesterday, last week, in 2002 or two days ago.
Forming the past simple is very easy, just add -ed to the base form of the verb.
play → played work → worked open → opened
However, there are some spelling rules you must know:
✅ 1. Verbs ending in -e: just add -d
love → loved bake → baked live → lived
✅ 2. Verbs ending in a consonant + y: change y to i and add -ed
cry → cried study → studied carry → carried
COMMON MISTAKES
But if the verb ends in a vowel + y, just add -ed:
enjoy → enjoyed play → played
✅ 3. One-syllable verbs ending in consonant–vowel–consonant (CVC): double the final consonant and add -ed
stop → stopped plan → planned rob → robbed nod → nodded
BE CAREFUL
Don’t double if the final consonant is w, x, or y:
fix → fixed snow → snowed
✅ 4. Two-syllable verbs: double the final consonant only if the stress is on the second syllable
prefer → preferred admit → admitted control → controlled
✅ 5. There are spelling differences between UK and US English for some two-syllable verbs ending in a vowel + l, where the stress is on the first syllable.
travel → travelled (UK) / traveled (US) cancel → cancelled (UK) / canceled (US) label → labelled (UK) / labeled (US)
🎧The -ed ending in regular past simple verbs has three different pronunciations in English — but the spelling is always the same. Here’s how it works:
/t/ After voiceless sounds (except /t/) walked, danced, helped, kissed, laughed, watched → sounds like "t" /d/ After voiced sounds (except /d/) played, called, cleaned, loved, rubbed, welcomed → sounds like "d" /ɪd/ After t or d sounds wanted, visited, needed, decided → sounds like "id"
