Past, present and future
Class 4 English · Tenses · 41 questions with answers
Class 4 is where tense stops being 'add -ed' and starts having exceptions. Most errors at this age are not carelessness - they are a child applying the regular rule correctly to an irregular verb, which is a sign of understanding rather than of failure.
- Changes a regular verb into past, present and future correctly
- Uses the common irregular past forms without applying -ed
- Keeps one tense across a whole paragraph instead of drifting
Exercise 1 of 4 · 12 questions
Write the past tense of each verb.
Write the answer · Warm-up
Here’s one done for you
walk → walked. Most verbs just take -ed. Two of these change slightly first: carry becomes carried because the y turns to i, and stop becomes stopped with the p doubled. Those two spellings are the whole difficulty in this exercise.
- 1)walk
- 2)jump
- 3)clean
- 4)watch
- 5)carry
- 6)stop
- 7)hurry
- 8)plan
- 9)reply
- 10)shout
- 11)travel
- 12)dance
Answers
- 1) walked
- 2) jumped
- 3) cleaned
- 4) watched
- 5) carried
- 6) stopped
- 7) hurried
- 8) planned
- 9) replied
- 10) shouted
- 11) travelled
- 12) danced
Exercise 2 of 4 · 16 questions
Write the past tense. Careful - none of these take -ed.
Write the answer · Guided
Here’s one done for you
go → went. Not 'goed'. A child who writes goed has understood the -ed rule perfectly and applied it to a verb that does not follow it, which is progress rather than a mistake. These simply have to be learned one at a time - four of them here rhyme, which helps: bought, taught, brought, caught.
- 1)go
- 2)eat
- 3)buy
- 4)teach
- 5)bring
- 6)catch
- 7)think
- 8)write
- 9)drink
- 10)sing
- 11)swim
- 12)begin
- 13)speak
- 14)break
- 15)fly
- 16)leave
Answers
- 1) went
- 2) ate
- 3) bought
- 4) taught
- 5) brought
- 6) caught
- 7) thought
- 8) wrote
- 9) drank
- 10) sang
- 11) swam
- 12) began
- 13) spoke
- 14) broke
- 15) flew
- 16) left
Exercise 3 of 4 · 12 questions
Fill in the correct form of the verb in brackets.
Fill in the blank · Practice
Here’s one done for you
Yesterday we ______ (go) to the market. → went. The word 'yesterday' decides it before you look at the verb at all. Teach your child to find the time word first - yesterday, every morning, tomorrow, last week - because that word chooses the tense.
- 1)Yesterday we ______ (go) to the market.
- 2)Every morning she ______ (drink) milk.
- 3)Tomorrow I ______ (visit) my cousin.
- 4)Last week they ______ (buy) a new fan.
- 5)He ______ (write) a letter every Sunday.
- 6)Next month we ______ (start) a new chapter.
- 7)Last night it ______ (rain) very heavily.
- 8)My father ______ (leave) for work at eight every day.
- 9)Next Sunday they ______ (come) to our house.
- 10)Two days ago she ______ (break) her pencil.
- 11)Birds ______ (fly) south every winter.
- 12)Tomorrow the school ______ (close) early.
Answers
- 1) went
- 2) drinks
- 3) will visit
- 4) bought
- 5) writes
- 6) will start
- 7) rained
- 8) leaves
- 9) will come
- 10) broke
- 11) fly
- 12) will close
Exercise 4 of 4 · 1 questions
This paragraph keeps changing tense. Rewrite it all in the past.
Write the answer · Challenge
Here’s one done for you
We reach → We reached. Then keep going: is → was, sit → sat, buys → bought, plays → played, listen → listened, comes → came. Seven verbs. Drifting between tenses inside one paragraph is the single most common Class 4 writing error, and reading the finished version aloud catches it faster than checking each verb.
- 1)We reach the station early. The train is late, so we sit on a bench. Amma buys tea. A man plays the flute nearby. We listen until the train comes.
Answers
- 1) We reached the station early. The train was late, so we sat on a bench. Amma bought tea. A man played the flute nearby. We listened until the train came.
While your child works
- If your child writes 'goed' or 'buyed', say the correct form once and move on. It is a sign the rule has been learned, not that it has not.
- The time word - yesterday, tomorrow, every day - decides the tense. Teaching that one habit fixes most of the fill-in-the-blank errors.
- For the last exercise, have your child read their rewrite aloud. Tense drift is heard long before it is seen.