How can you learn irregular verbs in English efficiently?

As you may have heard, irregular verbs in English are very complicated . The verb indicates what the action of the sentence is, that is, it tells us what is happening at that moment or what happened in the past, without a verb nothing is said. Despite its complication, there are a number of highly effective “tricks” that we can use. We are going to teach you How can you learn irregular verbs in English efficiently?

Bad memories of irregular verbs in English

Probably, if you have studied some English at school, perhaps you remember the difficulties you had to learn the famous list of irregular verbs of this language, and it has stuck with you as a heavy, ugly and boring exercise and you remember that when in the end, you got little benefit from it all, to the point that in a short time you forgot everything.

How to learn them verbs efficiently?

Without realizing it, songs come to your mind that you know by heart, and like songs so many other things that you have learned off by heart without even trying, without thinking too much about them. For example, in your school days you sang complete songs that you listened to on the radio without any help and without any effort, because exactly the same you can do with irregular verbs and with anything else you propose.

The solution is to repeat regularly

How do you learn a song that you like? Few people entertain themselves for hours and hours listening to the same song to learn it off by heart. However, when a song you like comes out, you have the opportunity without intending to hear it repeatedly, on the radio, in stores, on television, and every time without requesting it.

Through these repetitions, the texts are printed in our memory after time, a few repetitions are enough and our brain absorbs the song . This process, called the Spaced Repetion System or SRS, is a technique derived from scientific research on memory that stands out for its effectiveness. Its use is frequent to remember all kinds of things and, the best thing is that it serves to prevent them from being forgotten

That is, if you repeat them a little over several days , the irregular verbs in English will stay in your memory in a short period of time.

Introduce new verbs little by little

So from one day to the next, only over time does the brain gradually accumulate all the information it receives. Without having to force yourself to do more. Great news: learning irregular verbs is very similar.

By using new irregular verbs regularly, you will begin to memorize the full range of irregular verbs. Until the day comes that you all know. This is great for you, it only took you about five minutes a day for a couple of weeks!

In a practical sense, how do you learn irregular verbs in English?

It is not a problem, it is just a matter of focus as we have already informed you. Remember that you learn many things off by heart without thinking too much about them. In summary, the first thing to do is narrow down your list of irregular verbs to the most important ones. Because many verbs are too specific, so you don’t need to learn them once you’ve just started.

 Use the fragmentation technique

Here’s how to use the so-called “chunked” memory technique. Break what you have learned into small pieces that you can easily remember. The technique to learn irregular verbs consists of looking for similarities between the verbs and dividing them into groups.

You can also look for spelling similarities . Summarizing these irregular verbs with similar spelling will be helpful, especially for verbs in the last two categories. For example: if you learn the irregular verb in English “to mean” you can also learn: negotiate, conserve, spend, learn and dream. 6 verbs at once! Not bad…

Do the same with the irregular verb “begin” and the five similar verbs: drink, twist, sing, sink, and swim. For these verbs you need to remember “iau”. The “i” in the infinitive becomes an “a” in the past simple and a “u” in the past participle.

There is a type of “tree” exercise that you can also use for its effectiveness and simplicity . You draw a tree with a branch for each group and on each branch a leaf for each irregular verb in English, it is a good way to visualize groups and retain them in your memory just by writing and looking at them.

In conclusion

Currently in English more than 370 irregular verbs are used , which seems to be already complicated. It is true that they are quite difficult to learn because they are unique and, therefore, there is no other solution than to memorize them. If we take into account that irregular verbs do not follow the usual declination patterns, the complication is greater, but with imagination, and perseverance we can reduce their complexity by a good percentage and make them affordable without affecting our learning of English in time and enthusiasm.