Loretta S. Gray - English Verbs

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When you study English verbs, you must do more than search for their meanings in a dictionary. You must also learn how to conjugate them and use these conjugations appropriately.

Most students begin their studies by memorizing verb forms. They learn both the verb endings for regular verbs and the more complicated forms of the irregular verbs. Practice Makes Perfect: English Verbs provides you with opportunities to practice conjugating more than three hundred verbs, both regular and irregular. However, this text is more than a list of verb forms and mechanical exercises. It also presents the reasons for choosing one verb form over another. For example, you may know the dictionary meaning of walk, but to use this verb to refer to the future, you must understand your options; that is, you must understand the role of tense and aspect.

To indicate future, you could say Ill walk to school today, Im going to walk to school today, or Im walking to school today, but not I walk to school today. When most people think of tense, they think of time. While it is true that tense is sometimes related to present, past, and future time, this is not always the case. In the sentence My plane leaves in twenty minutes, the simple present tense of the verb leave is used to refer to future time. As well as being marked for tense, verbs are marked for aspect. I study English and I am studying English are both in the present tense, but they differ in aspect. I study English and I am studying English are both in the present tense, but they differ in aspect.

The verb in the first sentence refers to a habitual action; the verb in the second sentence refers to an action that is not yet completed. To indicate both tense and aspect, study is said to be in the simple present and am studying is said to be in the present progressive. In the sentence I had been studying for the test when the phone rang, there are two main verbs: study and ring. They are both in the past tense; however, they differ in aspect. Had been studying is the past perfect progressive, whereas rang is just the simple past. The difference in aspect indicates that the action of studying was ongoing and prior to the action of ringing.

Tense and aspect intersect in the following way. The form and meaning of each of these tense-aspect combinations will be described in the units of this book. Although you will study all the tenses mentioned in traditional textbooks, you will also study the concept of aspect so that you will have a deeper understanding of the grammatical meaning conveyed by the form of a verb. Thus, as you work through the material in Practice Makes Perfect: English Verbs, you will learn not only how to conjugate verbs but also why to use specific verb forms. Any study of verbs would be incomplete without the inclusion of special types of verbs and complementation patterns. After you become familiar with verb conjugations, you will study phrasal verbs, modal verbs, and verb complementation (gerunds and infinitives).

This book focuses on the verbs most frequently used in English. It is appropriate for classroom use or individual study. If you are in a class, your teacher may choose to assign exercises to supplement your other coursework. If you are studying alone, you can use the Answer Key at the back of the book to check your work and decide whether you should review a chapter or go on to the next. There are six principal parts in this book: PART ITHE PRESENT TENSE The five units in will help you learn the verb forms that constitute four different tense-aspect combinations: simple present, present progressive, present perfect, and present perfect progressive. You will practice using these forms in positive statements, negative statements, and questions.

You will also learn how to form contractions with pronouns or the word not. A special section focuses on the verb be. PART IITHE PAST TENSE The five units in , you will practice using these tense-aspect combinations and their contracted forms in positive statements, negative statements, and questions. In this part also, there is a special section focusing on the verb

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