HESI A2 · Grammar · 5 min read
Verbs and Verb Tenses
- Distinguish between action, linking, helping, transitive, and intransitive verbs.
- Identify the four principal parts of regular and irregular verbs, including commonly confused pairs such as lie/lay, rise/raise, and sit/set.
- Form and apply simple, progressive, and perfect tenses accurately while maintaining tense consistency and correct mood.
Verb Classifications: Action, Linking, and Auxiliary Verbs
A verb expresses a physical action, a mental action, or a state of being. Depending on its role in a sentence, a verb can convey what someone is doing or describe a condition. Action verbs describe what the subject of a sentence performs or experiences. Note that a non-finite verb, such as an infinitive or participle, cannot stand alone as the main predicate of an independent clause; it requires proper phrasing to form a complete grammatical thought.
Linking verbs connect the subject to a subject complement that renames or describes the subject. Rather than showing an action, these verbs indicate a state of being or sensory perception. Common linking verbs include forms of 'to be', 'seem', 'appear', 'become', and sensory verbs such as 'taste', 'smell', and 'feel'.
Helping verbs combine with a main verb to form a multi-word verb phrase. Primary helping verbs are inflected forms of 'be', 'do', and 'have'. In addition, modal auxiliary verbs can express ability, permission, possibility, necessity, obligation, advice, or prediction. Core modal auxiliaries do not inflect and are followed by a base-form verb without 'to'; the marginal modal 'ought' is followed by 'to' and a base-form verb.
Common mistakes
- Confusing the simple past and past participle forms of irregular verbs, such as writing 'have drank' instead of 'have drunk', 'had swam' instead of 'had swum', or spelling the simple past of 'lead' as 'lead' instead of 'led'.
- Selecting the wrong verb in confusing pairs by ignoring transitivity, such as using 'lay' when reclining is intended without a direct object, or using 'rise' when an object is being elevated.
- Introducing unnecessary shifts between past and present tenses within a single sentence or paragraph instead of maintaining consistency.
- Using 'was' rather than the subjunctive 'were' in present-time contrary-to-fact 'if' clauses (e.g., mistakenly saying 'If I was you' instead of 'If I were you').
Key points
- Verbs express physical actions, mental actions, or states of being, and can function as action verbs, linking verbs, or helping verbs (primary inflected auxiliaries and invariant modals).
- A transitive verb takes a direct object, while an intransitive verb does not take a direct object.
- In the senses discussed here, 'lie', 'rise', and 'sit' are intransitive, whereas 'lay', 'raise', and 'set' take direct objects; some of these verbs have other uses with different transitivity.
- Most main verbs have four principal parts, the base form, present participle, simple past, and past participle, but modal auxiliaries may lack some of these forms; irregular verbs do not consistently form their past and past participle with '-d' or '-ed'.
- Progressive tenses describe ongoing actions using a form of 'be' plus a present participle, while perfect tenses relate an earlier action or state to a later point using 'have' plus a past participle.
- Verb tense consistency must be preserved unless a deliberate shift in the time frame occurs, though general truths and scientific facts may stay in the present tense within past narratives.
- In present-time contrary-to-fact 'if' clauses, the traditional subjunctive form of 'be' is 'were' for every subject.
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