Teaching English Past Tense Pronunciation to ESL Learners

Teaching English past tense pronunciation is probably one of the more challenging parts of teaching the Simple Past to ESL students. It's certainly one of the more difficult things for students studying English to master. However, with a few simple pronunciation tips, ESL teachers can effectively design lesson plans and ESL learners can master pronunciation of the challenging "-ed" endings of Past Tense verbs and past participles.

When teaching English past tense pronunciation for regular Simple Past verbs, ESL and EFL students have to first be taught to add "-ed" to the end of the base form of the verb. This is easy enough for forming and spelling regular past tense verbs; the problem with pronunciation arises because students are often taught (or observe) that the "-ed" ending adds another syllable to the word. And then they always add another syllable to the past tense of the verb. For example, "worked" is erroneously pronounced "work/id/" with two syllables, instead of just one, "work/t/."

A second syllable with the "-ed" ending is only necessary when the last sound (not the last letter) is a /t/ or /d/, for example, "wanted," "decided," "needed," or "invited." The last sound for the words "want" and "invite" is /t/. The last sound for the words "decide" and "need" is /d/. These two sounds require that the added -ed ending be pronounced with an additional syllable.