Mr. Loeb English II Kenwood Academy High School

Kenwood Academy 10 th grade writers will… 1.Achieve 3 points growth between the pre-PLAN and post-PLAN. 2.Achieve 85% mastery on all English and Reading College Readiness Skills covered in the course. 3.Score an average of 85% on all writing assignments by the end of the year.

Most verbs in the English language form their past tense by adding the –ed suffix to the end of the verb. However, there are some verbs that cannot form their past tense using the –ed suffix. These are called irregular verbs. Today, we’re going to learn about how to form these verbs, and, more importantly, how NOT to form them incorrectly.

While more verbs get an –ed suffix added to them to form the past tense and past participle forms, there are several verb in the English language that do not follow this pattern. Regular: walk (walked) open (opened) mail (mailed) Irregular: fight (fought) build (built) freeze (froze, frozen) Can you think of any others?

Present-perfect verbs (verbs that have) do not use the word OF. Examples: Incorrect: Wendy might of eaten the last piece of pie. Correct: Wendy might have eaten the last piece of pie. Incorrect: Gary should of taken out the garbage. Correct: Gary should have taken out the garbage.

DO NOT use the word “OF” with a verb! This is the most common error when forming present- perfect verbs. Why is this such a common error? When writers use contractions with present-perfect verb forms, they form would’ve, should’ve, and could’ve, etc. Yet, over time, if writers are not careful, the sound of those contractions can give way to the sloppy use of the preposition “OF” instead of “have”. Don’t do it!