Types of verb – Action and stative

To begin with, we’ll look at action and stative verbs. These are two of the more straightforward types of verb, and can be relatively simple to explain to students.

Action Verbs

Action verbs are used to describe actions and movements. They’re also known as ‘dynamic verbs’, and are often the first ones people think of.

Examples include:

Speak, play, work, eat, go.

When introducing action verbs to beginners it can help to start off simply, beginning with teaching a few basic actions. Such lessons can be livened up with dances or games such as Simon says.

As students get comfortable with using basic action verbs, there are some key points that you can start to introduce to them.

Teaching notes:

Negative sentences which use action verbs are usually constructed with “don’t” or “do not”  followed by the action verb. For example – “Don’t go”, “Do not speak to him”.

When using the third person (‘he’, ‘she’ or ‘it’) an ‘s’ sound is added to the end of the word, so “I play” but “He plays”. For words with a consonant sound, the written form takes a simple ‘s‘ at the end. However, verbs with a vowel sound can become more difficult – for example “go” becomes “goes”.

Once students are confident with using action verbs in the present tense, for example “eat”, you can then show how to use these verbs with other tenses – such as “ate, eaten”. If you’re not familiar with all of the tenses yet, don’t worry – we’ll cover them in the next module.

Stative Verbs

These verbs describe a state instead of an action – they’re often associated with verbs covering thinking, feeling, sensing or owning.

Examples include:

Like, hate, want, see, hear, believe, imagine, remember and appreciate.

Many verbs can be action or stative depending on how they’re used; “He looks sick” and “She smells nice” are stative while “He looks at the clock frequently” and “She smells the flowers” are action verbs.

One thing to ensure students know, is that stative verbs are rarely used in continuous tenses. For example, “I am hating”, “He is wanting”, or “They are believing”, are common mistakes among students.

When it comes to teaching stative verbs, it can be useful to choose activities based around students’ likes, dislikes, or opinions. For example, asking students about their hobbies, and how they feel about them.