How to Identify a Verb

Recognizing Verbs in Sentences

Find the word in a sentence that describes action. Basically, verbs are action words. They describe someone or something performing an action. Start by looking at a sentence and identifying the action words. If there are more than one, underline all of them. For example, in the sentence, “He ran to the beach,” the verb is “ran” because running is an action. Think about other words that describe actions. "Walk," "think," "play," and "drive" are all action words and work as verbs.

Remember common verb suffixes if you can’t identify the action. Verbs often have distinct suffixes, or endings. Common verb suffixes are “ing,” “ed,” “en,” and “s.” These are added when a verb tense changes. If you can’t find the action word right away, look at the sentence again for words with common verb suffixes, and you’ve probably found the verb. If you have trouble finding the verb in the sentence, “Jack was thinking about the test,” find the word that ends in “-ing.” In this case, it’s “thinking,” which is also the sentence’s verb. The "ed" and "en" endings are sometimes irregular in English, so the suffix guideline isn't always reliable. For example, typically the “ed” ending is added when a verb is put in its past tense, but the word “thought” is the past tense of “to think.”

Learn the different verb tenses. Verbs are the only words that are conjugated, or put into different forms. A verb conjugation changes depending on what tense the sentence is in. The 5 verb tenses are infinitive, past tense, present tense, past participle, and present participle. All verbs can be conjugated into these different forms. Learning how to identify verbs in different forms is important for locating verbs in a sentence. Let’s conjugate the verb “think” through all its forms: infinitive = to think, past tense = thought, present tense = think, past participle = have thought, present participle = am thinking. These are all different forms of the same verb.

Learn the different tenses of "to be." The verb "to be" is difficult because its tense changes produce different words. These different tenses are easy to miss, so memorize the different tenses of "to be" to identify them in a sentence. The different forms of "to be" are: is, am, are, was, were, been, and being. Memorize these so you catch the different versions of "to be" in a sentence. In the sentence, “John is not happy about going to his aunt’s house,” you can probably identify “going” as a verb because it’s an action. But in this sentence, “is” is also a verb, because it’s the present tense of “to be.”

Finding Main Verbs

Underline all the action words if a sentence has more than one. Many sentences have more than one action word. Only one of these action words acts as the main verb in a sentence. Start by identifying all action words, regardless of their tense. In the sentence, “He was running to the beach to see the show,” both “running” and “see” are action words, but only one is the main verb. Underline both to figure out which is the main verb.

Conjugate the verbs and see if the sentence makes sense. Main verbs are the only words that you conjugate, or change the tense of. Change the tense of each verb in the sentence to see if the sentence still works. When you find the verb you can change without ruining the sentence, you’ve located the main verb. Think about if you converted the sentence, “He was running to the beach to see the show” into the past tense. Would you say, “He was running to the beach to saw the show” or “He ran to the beach to see the show”? Clearly the first one doesn’t make sense. That means the main verb is "running/ran."

Identify the subject of the sentence. In English, the verb usually comes right after the sentence subject, so finding the subject helps you locate the main verb. Once you think you’ve found the main verb, check yourself by finding the subject of the sentence. In sentences, subjects are the things doing the action. In the sentence, “He was running to the beach to see the show,” we figured out that “running” was the main verb. Now check the sentence to see where the subject is. Who or what is doing the action? In this sentence, “He” is doing the action, and that’s the subject. Since verbs usually come right after the sentence subject, this confirms that “running” is the verb.