Verbs

We use lots of words every day and lots of those words are verbs.  A verb is a type of word that tells us about something that happens.

The dog ate my homework.

I've highlighted the verb in this sentence.  The word "ate" tells us what happened.  The other words around it tell us who did it (the dog) and what they did it to (my homework).  Every sentence in English has at least one verb, because the purpose for writing or saying a sentence is to tell us about something.

Run!

 

Here we only have one word in the whole sentence, but that one word is still a verb.  It tells us about an action - running.

 

Verbs also give us an idea of "when".  The word "ate" tells us that the homework has already been eaten - it happened in the past.  "Run" is an instruction (also known as an "imperative verb", which we'll cover in a later lesson) and therefore is going to happen in the future.

 

The dog is eating my homework.
 





Here the action is happening right now.  It's still the dog eating the homework, but it hasn't already happened - there's a chance that we could get the homework back from the dog.

 

The dog will eat my homework.

 

The action in this sentence hasn't happened yet - it's a prediction for the future.