Types of verb – Recap
Verbs are one of the key building blocks which will enable your students to do so much with the English language. You might not need to explicitly teach each type of verb in your classes, especially if you’re teaching beginners, but it’s still important for you to build familiarity with them.
Take a few minutes to recap all the types of verb we’ve just covered:
| Verb type: | Description: | Examples: |
|---|---|---|
| Action verbs | Verbs that express physical or mental actions. | Speak, play, work, eat, go. |
| Stative verbs | Verbs that describe a state of being. | Like, hate, want, see, hear, believe, imagine, and appreciate. |
| Transitive verbs | Verbs that require an object to make sense. | I love puppies / love ice cream / I love my mother. |
| Intransitive verbs | Verbs that do not need direct objects to complete their meaning. | She laughed / we talked. |
| Auxiliary verbs | Verbs used in forming the tenses, moods, and voices of other verbs. The primary auxiliary verbs are “be”, “do”, and “have”. | He is reading a book. I have never seen Star Wars. |
| Modal verbs | A kind of auxiliary verb used to express necessity or possibility. | Can, could, might, may, must, should, shall, will, and would. |
| Phrasal verbs | Verbs made up of several words used together, usually a verb combined with an adverb or preposition. | Take off, look into, get away with, or put up with. |
| Regular verbs | Verbs that follow standard patterns of inflection. | Want/wanted Play/played Talk/talked |
| Irregular verbs | Verbs that do not follow standard patterns of inflection – changing with tense. | Eat/ate/eaten See/saw/seen Know/knew/known |
📝 Exercise: To practice these further – try the two exercises below:
- Write a sentence for each of the 9 types of verb.
- Write a plan for your day. Then read through it, highlighting the different verbs you’ve written, and matching them to the correct type.
These exercises can help you to first memorize the different uses, and secondly to see how they come up in a natural context.