English grammar · Intermediate
English Verb Forms
Verb forms and structures are everything a verb does beyond marking tense: the infinitive and the -ing form, the passive, the conditionals, reported speech, phrasal verbs, and the patterns that decide what can follow a verb. Most intermediate grammar lives here.
What it is
A verb has five forms in English: the base (go), the third-person present (goes), the past (went), the past participle (gone), and the -ing form (going). Everything in this section is about how those five forms combine with each other and with other words: to go, being gone, had it been done, she made him leave.
I want to go. I enjoy going. The letter was sent. If I had known, I would have come. Five patterns, one section.
How to spot it
Ask what comes after the verb. A to-infinitive, an -ing form, an object plus a bare infinitive, or a that-clause is decided by the verb itself, and that decision is what most of these pages teach.
- She decided to leave. (decide + to-infinitive)
- She avoided leaving early. (avoid + -ing form)
- She let him leave. (let + object + bare infinitive)
- The door was left open. (passive: be + past participle)
The past participle is the workhorse: it builds every perfect tense and every passive. If a verb is irregular, its participle is the form to learn first.
Verb Forms Quick Reference
The five forms of a verb, regular and irregular
| Form | Regular (walk) | Irregular (take) | Where it appears |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base | walk | take | infinitive, present simple, imperative, after modals |
| Third-person -s | walks | takes | present simple with he, she, it |
| Past | walked | took | past simple only |
| Past participle | walked | taken | perfect tenses, passive, some adjectives |
| -ing form | walking | taking | continuous tenses, gerunds, participle clauses |
All 13 verb forms lessons
This is the largest section of the library because it covers the structures that turn simple sentences into fluent ones. The pages fall into families: the non-finite forms (infinitive, -ing form, participle clauses), voice (active and passive, advanced passives), conditionals (zero to third and inverted), reported speech (statements, questions, reporting verbs), the verb types (linking, stative, irregular, phrasal, multi-word), and the patterns of what follows a verb. Each page stands alone, and the related links at the bottom take you to its neighbours.
- Active and Passive Voice: Active and passive voice are two ways of arranging the same event. In the active voice the subject performs the action (The committee approved the plan); in the passive the receiver of the action becomes the subject, the verb takes a form of be plus a past participle, and the doer either follows by or disappears (The plan was approved). Every tense has a passive form, and converting between the two is a mechanical process once you know the steps.
- Reported Speech: Reported speech (also called indirect speech) is how you tell someone what another person said without quoting their exact words. The reporting verb (said, told) usually sits in the past, so the tense of the original sentence moves one step back, and pronouns and time words shift to the reporter's point of view: “I'll call you tomorrow” becomes She said she would call me the next day.
- Zero Conditional Sentences: A zero conditional sentence describes what always happens when a condition is met. Both halves use the present simple: if or when plus a present simple verb states the condition, and a second present simple clause gives the result (If it rains, the match is cancelled). Because the result is automatic, the zero conditional is the form for scientific facts, general truths, rules, habits, and instructions.
- Linking Verbs: Linking verbs (also called copular verbs) connect a subject to a word or phrase that describes or identifies it, called the complement: She is a nurse. The milk smells sour. They do not take an object, because nothing is being done to anything, and that is why an adjective follows them rather than an adverb: you feel bad, not badly.
- Phrasal Verbs: A phrasal verb is a verb combined with a particle (an adverb such as up, out, off, or a preposition such as into, after) to make a unit with its own meaning: give up means stop, look after means take care of, run into means meet by chance. The meaning often cannot be worked out from the parts, and the grammar depends on whether the phrasal verb takes an object and, if so, whether that object can split the verb from its particle.
- Question Tags: A question tag is a short question added to the end of a statement to check information or invite agreement: It's cold, isn't it? You didn't call, did you? The tag repeats the auxiliary verb of the statement with a pronoun, and its polarity is reversed: a positive statement takes a negative tag, and a negative statement takes a positive one.
- Verb Phrases: A verb phrase is the main verb of a clause together with any auxiliary verbs in front of it: works, is working, has been working, might have been working. The main verb carries the meaning; the auxiliaries add tense, aspect, voice, and modality, and they always appear in a fixed order. Seeing the verb phrase as one unit explains why questions, negatives, and adverbs behave the way they do in English.
- The Infinitive: The infinitive is the base form of a verb, either with to (to go, to be, to understand) or without it (go, be, understand). It has no tense and no subject of its own, and it does the work of a noun or a complement: it follows verbs like want and decide, adjectives like happy and difficult, and nouns like time and chance, and it explains the purpose of an action. Which form appears, to-infinitive or bare infinitive, depends on the word in front of it.
- Third Conditional: The third conditional talks about an imagined past: a condition that did not happen and the result it would have had. The if-clause takes the past perfect (if I had known) and the result clause takes would have plus a past participle (I would have called). Because the past cannot be changed, the third conditional is the grammar of regret, relief, criticism, and speculation about how things might have turned out.
- Irregular Verbs: Irregular verbs are verbs whose past simple and past participle are not made by adding -ed. Instead they change their vowel (sing, sang, sung), change their ending (keep, kept, kept), stay the same in every form (put, put, put), or do something unique (go, went, gone). There are about 200 in everyday use, and they include the most frequent verbs in English, so they have to be learned as three-part sets.
- The Verb To Be: The verb to be is the most common verb in English, and the most irregular. In the present simple it has three forms, am, is, and are, chosen by the subject: I am, he is, they are. It describes who or what someone is, how they are, and where they are, and it makes its own negatives and questions without do. It also appears in there is and there are, and as the helping verb in continuous tenses and the passive.
- Stative Verbs: Stative verbs describe states rather than actions: what someone knows, feels, owns, perceives, or is. Because a state has no beginning, middle, and end that you can be in the midst of, these verbs normally do not take continuous forms: I know the answer, not I am knowing it. The opposite group, dynamic verbs, describe actions and processes and take any tense freely.
- Passive Voice: The passive voice makes the receiver of an action the subject of the sentence: The window was broken, instead of Someone broke the window. It is formed with be plus a past participle, and English chooses it when the doer is unknown, unimportant, or obvious, when the receiver is the topic, or when a writer wants a neutral, impersonal tone. The doer can be added with by, but usually is not.
Verb Forms FAQs
- What are the five verb forms in English?
- The base form (write), the third-person singular present (writes), the past simple (wrote), the past participle (written), and the -ing form (writing). Regular verbs make the past and past participle identically with -ed; irregular verbs have to be learned form by form.
- When do I use the infinitive and when the -ing form?
- It depends on the verb before it. Want, decide, hope, and promise take a to-infinitive; enjoy, avoid, mind, and suggest take -ing; begin, start, like, and love take either with little change in meaning. A few verbs (try, stop, remember, forget) take both but with a change of meaning, and those are worth a page of their own.
- What is the difference between a phrasal verb and a multi-word verb?
- Phrasal verbs are one kind of multi-word verb: a verb plus an adverb particle (give up, turn down). The other kinds are prepositional verbs (look after, depend on) and phrasal-prepositional verbs (put up with, look forward to). The difference matters for word order: only phrasal verbs let an object come between the two parts.
- How do I know which conditional to use?
- Match the conditional to how real the condition is. Zero for things that are always true (If you heat ice, it melts). First for real future possibilities (If it rains, we'll stay in). Second for unreal or unlikely present situations (If I had time, I would help). Third for imagined pasts that did not happen (If I had known, I would have come).
- Why is the passive so common in written English?
- Because it lets the writer put the important information first and leave out or delay the doer. Mistakes were made puts the focus on the mistakes; The report was published in May does not need to say who published it. In speech the active is more common, and the get-passive (it got broken) is more common still.