Practising Verbs

Verbs are important. They are in every sentence and help to communicate the main idea. In fact, nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs are the most important words in a sentence. We stress these words when we talk, so our speech is clear to the listener. Here's an example.

On Christmas Eve, Santa likes to eat cookies and drink milk, and the reindeer enjoy carrots.

The most important verbs are irregular verbs. These are the verbs that are used the most in the English language. You must memorize the irregular verb forms. The back pages in some grammar books include a list of the irregular verbs in three forms, base form, past form and participle form.

Try the verb, eat. Santa likes to eat cookies. Santa ate cookies last Christmas. Santa has eaten cookies at Christmas for many years.

Memorizing the verb forms is boring, but your spoken and written English accuracy will improve a lot. Maybe you will find this video less boring. You might even enjoy it! This verb list has sound and pictures too. The pictures should help you remember the different verbs, and the sound should help your pronunciation. If you can, try saying the verb forms out loud with the speaker. Try it more than once if you like. Repetition helps you remember. Repeating this exercise more than once a week will help you remember.

Unfortunately, there is one error in this exercise. The voice says, "lead, led, led", but the words say be "lead, lead, lead". The words should say, "lead, led, led".





However, memorizing the verb forms and verb tenses is not enough. You must use them when you talk and write. You must develop an understanding of time. When you become a strong intermediate ESL student, you will be able to change tenses often. Did you notice the last sentence talks about the future and that this sentence is in the present? This is called a shift in time. The next video gives some examples.

Also, this video has a short talk about the Olympics in China that finished this summer. You will recognize the teacher in this video. Jennifer's videos were used in an earlier blog on pronouncing the /th/ sound. This video is a higher level and is suggested for advanced ESL students. Don't worry if you find this a bit difficult. It should teach you that you must be prepared to change your tenses. When you write, edit your sentences for shifts in verb tense. As your ESL level gets higher, changing verb tenses will become easier and more natural.