Past Tense Regular Verbs
Here’s a funny thing about English – all regular past tense verbs end in –ed: walked, talked, showered, continued, approved… but none of them are actually pronounced ‘ed’! There are three types of sounds that regular past tense verbs make: ‘t’, ‘d’, and ‘id’.
Here is a link to a video giving a short explanation of regular past tense verbs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M7xIwAqy9I
The ‘t’ sound endings are the most common. One way to determine if the word will sound like ‘t’ is to look at the base verb. If it ends in p, k, s, ch, sh, f, x, or h, it will probably sound like ‘t’. Look at the following list of regular past tense verbs that end in –ed but sound like ‘t’: asked, baked, brushed, cooked, cracked, crashed, danced, dressed, dropped, escaped, finished, fixed, guessed, helped, hoped, hiked, joked, jumped, knocked, kissed, laughed, locked, looked, missed, mixed, packed, passed, picked, pressed, pushed, pronounced, relaxed, slipped, smoked, stopped, shopped, talked, typed, walked, washed, watched, worked.
The second category is past tense regular verbs that sound like ‘d’. If the base word ends in l, v, n, m, r, b, v, g, w, y, z, there is a good chance it will sound like ‘d’. Here is a list of –ed words that sound like ‘d’: advised, allowed, answered, appeared, arrived, believed, belonged, burned, called, carried, changed, cleaned, closed, covered, cried, damaged, described, died, dried, earned, encouraged, enjoyed, entered, explained, explored, filled, followed, happened, interviewed, imagined, jailed, killed, listened, lived, loved, measure, moved, opened, planned, played, performed, pulled, realized, remembered, rained, repaired, saved, shared, shaved, showed, signed, slammed, stayed, snowed, studied, tried, traveled, turned, used, welcomed, whispered, worried, yawned.
The third category of regular past tense verbs is the ‘id’ category. Words that end in ‘c’ or ‘t’ are pronounced like ‘id’. Here’s a list: accepted, afforded, attended, arrested, collected, contacted, counted, decided, defended, demanded, divided, ended, expanded, expected, exported, flooded, graduated, hated, hunted, included, invited, invented, landed, needed, painted, planted, printed, presented, pretended, protected, provided, rented, repeated, reported, respected, rested, scolded, skated, started, shouted, treated, visited, waited, wanted, wasted.
Give them a try and listen for the difference in endings.
Here is a final link to a fun and silly video where a teacher raps some past tense verbs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s04RenBFEUZ