Types of verb – Transitive, intransitive, auxiliary, modal
Transitive/Intransitive, Auxiliary, and Modal verbs can be more challenging for students to grasp. Identifying these types of verbs will require students to look deeper at the context of the sentence and the intended meaning.
As such, it’s recommended to make sure students have a good understanding of basic verbs before explicitly teaching these.
Transitive and intransitive verbs
Transitive verbs are those which need to be accompanied by a direct object when used in a sentence.
For example:
The phrase “I love…” has to be followed by something; “I love puppies/ice-cream/my mother“.
Just the phrase “I love” on its own doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t form a complete thought.
Intransitive verbs don’t need to be accompanied by an object to make sense, for example:
“She laughed.” or “We talked.” are full sentences that don’t need any extra information.
It’s important to note that not all verbs are strictly transitive or intransitive. Some verbs can be used either way depending on the context of the sentence. For example, “She walked to the store” “walked” is intransitive because it does not require an object. However, in the sentence “She walked her dog”, the verb “walked” is transitive because it requires the object “dog” after it.
🙋 How to check if a verb is transitive or intransitive:
All you need to do is check if the verb is followed by a direct object. For example, in the sentence “She bought a new car“, the word “car” is the object, and “bought” is the transitive verb. You can also try to remove the object and see if the sentence still makes sense – “She bought” wouldn’t make a complete sentence so the verb must be transitive.
Auxiliary verbs
These verbs are used to support the ‘main’ or most dominant verb in a sentence.
Read these sentences below and try to identify which are the main, and which are the auxiliary verbs (hover your mouse over for the answers):
He is reading a book.
I have never seen Star Wars.
The three most common auxiliary verbs in English are “be”, “do” and “have”, and they are often used for grammatical reasons, rather than introducing a direct change to a sentence’s meaning.
When teaching auxiliary verbs to students, it can help to ask students to underline all the verbs in a series of sentences, then pick out which verb gives the sentence its meaning and which are the ‘extra’ verbs.
Modal verbs
Modals are a type of auxiliary verb which express ability, permission or possibility.
Examples of common modal verbs are:
Can, could, might, must, should, will and would.
When introducing these to new learners, it can help to group them by certain themes.
Grouping modal verbs by theme:
💪 Ability – teach can and its past tense, could, as in “I couldn’t play the piano but now I can.”
👮 Permission – teach can and may, as in “Can I/ May I open a window?”
🔮 Possibility – introduce could, may, might and will as a way to talk about possibilities or certainties in the future.
🧭 Obligation – discuss the difference between could, should and must and compare how strongly the speaker feels. “You could ask the doctor about your rash”, “You should ask the doctor about your rash” and “You must ask the doctor about your rash” all have a different sense of urgency.
By adding some context that the students can relate to, it can help to clarify the subtle differences between these verbs, while also providing them with phrases that they can put into use in their daily lives.