Today I’m doing a quick win lesson to help you with the pronunciation of regular past tenses.
You may be thinking, well this is quite basic, why is she doing a lesson on this?! And it’s true, the construction of the past tense, is straightforward and is generally done by adding -d or -ed to the verb. Ok!
The tricky part is getting the pronunciation right, and it’s something that even high-level students can make mistakes with. Getting it right is a quick way to sounding more fluent and more like a native speaker. In other words, it’s a really good way to sound more natural.
And since I’ve just been writing a new course, How to tell interesting and engaging stories in English (which is all about how to tell stories and how to use the past narrative tenses), I thought this could be a useful extra to add to the course, and it would be nice to share with all the people who follow our blog. So, I do hope you find it useful and helpful.
Without further ado, let’s get to it!
How to pronounce the past tense “the -ED” like a native speaker!
Common past tense regular verbs wordlist
How to pronounce the past tense
Voiceless Last Sound of the Infinitive (say ‘ed’ as ‘t’)
- asked
- baked
- brushed
- cooked
- cracked
- crashed
- danced
- dressed
- dropped
- escaped
- finished
- fixed
- guessed
- helped
- hiked
- hoped
- joked
- jumped
- kissed
- knocked
- laughed
- locked
- looked
- missed
- mixed
- packed
- passed
- picked
- pressed
- pronounced
- pushed
- relaxed
- shopped
- slipped
- smoked
- stopped
- talked
- typed
- walked
- washed
- watched
- worked
Voiced Last Sound of the Infinitive (say ‘ed’ as ‘d’)
- advised
- agreed
- 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
- imagined
- interviewed
- jailed
- killed
- listened
- lived
- loved
- measured
- moved
- opened
- planned
- played
- performed
- pulled
- rained
- realised
- remembered
- repaired
- saved
- shared
- shaved
- showed
- signed
- slammed
- stayed
- snowed
- studied
- travelled
- tried
- turned
- used
- welcomed
- whispered
- worried
- yawned
T or D as the Last Sound of the Infinitive (say ‘ed’ as ‘id’)
- accepted
- afforded
- arrested
- attended
- collected
- contacted
- counted
- decided
- defended
- demanded
- divided
- ended
- expanded
- expected
- exported
- flooded
- graduated
- hated
- hunted
- included
- invented
- invited
- landed
- needed
- painted
- planted
- presented
- pretended
- printed
- protected
- provided
- rented
- repeated
- reported
- respected
- rested
- scolded
- shouted
- skated
- started
- treated
- visited
- waited
- wanted
- wasted
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How to tell interesting and engaging stories in English
