Ask a student to memorise "bring, brought, brought — buy, bought, bought — catch, caught, caught" as three unrelated entries in an alphabetical list, and it takes weeks to stick, if it ever does. Show them that bring / buy / catch / fight / seek / teach / think all take the exact same -ought/-aught shape, and it's one rule instead of seven.
Every irregular verb in English falls into one of four groups, based on how the base form, past simple and past participle relate to each other. Learn the groups, then the sub-patterns inside the hardest group, and the list stops feeling like 129 separate facts.
The four groups
| Group | Pattern | Verbs |
|---|---|---|
| A | All three forms are the same | 24 |
| B | Past simple = past participle (only the base form differs) | 56 |
| C | Base form = past participle (only the past simple differs) | 3 |
| D | All three forms are different | 46 |
Groups A and C are the easiest — together they're only 27 verbs, and A barely requires any memorising at all since nothing changes. Group B is the biggest at 56 verbs, but it breaks into small, clean families once you stop reading it as one long list. Group D, the 46 verbs where every form is different, is the one worth spending real time on — and it has patterns too.
Group A — nothing changes (24 verbs)
The base form, past simple and past participle are identical: cut, cut, cut. These need almost no active memorising — the trap isn't the spelling, it's remembering that a form looks unchanged but the sentence still needs it to carry past meaning.
The one to watch: read. It's the only verb in this group where the spelling doesn't move but the pronunciation does — read in the present is /riːd/, but read in the past and past participle is pronounced /rɛd/, like "red". Students read it correctly on the page and then say it wrong out loud, because nothing in the spelling tells them the sound has changed.
Group B — the past forms match (56 verbs)
Only the base form is different; past simple and past participle are identical: buy → bought → bought. This is the biggest group in the whole system — and the one every list leaves as one undifferentiated block. Sort it by shared ending instead, and 42 of the 56 verbs fall into ten small families. Only 14 are true one-offs.
The −ought / −aught family (7 verbs)
Shifts to a short "u" sound (7 verbs)
Different spellings (−ug, −un, −uck, −ung), same sound change — the vowel just moves to a short “uh”.
The −eep → −ept family (5 verbs)
Long ee/ea shortens to e (5 verbs)
The −ind → −ound family (4 verbs)
The −end → −ent family (4 verbs)
Three smaller families (8 verbs)
−ay → −aid: lay → laid, pay → paid, say → said. Just add −t: deal → dealt, feel → felt, mean → meant. −ell → −old: sell → sold, tell → told. And stand → stood pairs naturally with understand → understood, since the second is just the first with a prefix.
That's 42 of the 56 verbs organised into ten families. The remaining 14 — build, get, have, hear, hold, leave, lose, make, shine, shoot, sit, slide, win, light — don't rhyme with anything else here and are worth memorising as a short, separate list rather than mixed in with the rest.
Watch for: lead → led → led is in this group too, and it's a common written mix-up with the metal lead (pronounced /lɛd/) — the verb's base form is pronounced /liːd/, like "need".
Group C — only 3 verbs (the shortcut)
Base form and past participle match; only the past simple changes. This is the smallest group in the whole system, so it's worth memorising outright rather than pattern-matching:
Group D — the hard 46, and their sub-patterns
All three forms are different: speak → spoke → spoken. This is the group every list calls "the ones you just have to memorise" — but look closely and 36 of the 46 fall into eight recognisable families. Only 10 verbs have no partner at all.
The i → a → u vowel shift (8 verbs)
Once a student notices the vowel simply moves i → a → u across all three forms, these 8 verbs stop being 24 separate spellings and become one shape applied 8 times.
The −oke/−oken family (7 verbs)
The −ew/−own family (7 verbs)
withdraw is easy to miss because it looks like a "hard" word, but it's just draw with a prefix — same shift, same family.
The i_e → o_e → ‑en pattern (4 verbs)
The −ake/−ook/−aken pattern (3 verbs)
mistake is literally take with a prefix, so this "family" is really one shape shared by all three.
The −ear/−ore/−orn pattern (3 verbs)
Two smaller pairs (4 verbs)
Two more matched pairs are worth teaching together even though each family only has two members: give → gave → given and forgive → forgave → forgiven (forgive is just give with a prefix); and bite → bit → bitten and hide → hid → hidden, where a long vowel simply shortens before the ‑en ending.
That's 36 of the 46 "hardest" verbs organised into eight families. Only be, do, eat, fall, forbid, forget, go, lie, see, show — 10 verbs — genuinely share no pattern with anything else on the list and need to be learned one by one. That's a very different task from memorising 46 random items.
Put it into practice
The full set of 129 verbs, already sorted into these four groups, is free to download and print:
For classroom practice on top of the reference sheet, two A1 worksheets isolate the skill on its own:
- Regular Verbs in the Past Simple — the -ed spelling rules, so students aren't guessing which forms are even irregular.
- Irregular Verbs in the Past Simple — controlled practice with a base/past reference table built in.
In class, drill one family at a time rather than the whole list at once: put the −ought/−aught family on the board, elicit the pattern before you confirm it, then move to the i–a–u shift the following lesson. A handful of verbs that share a rule are far more likely to stick than the same handful mixed randomly into a 129-verb alphabetical list.