Auxiliary Verbs for beginners

auxiliary verbs be contraction do have modals

Auxiliary verbs help the main verb to express tense or voice or help make questions and negative sentences. That's why they're also called 'helping verbs'.

intermediate advanced

What Are Auxiliary Verbs?

Auxiliary verbs are helping verbs. They do not have separate meanings and are only used with other verbs to make questions, negation, different tenses, etc. Here are the major auxiliary verbs in English:

using the auxiliary verb 'be'

Be

Be is one of the irregular verbs. It has several forms.

Subject	Present
I	am
He/She/It	is
We/You/They	are

You are a lawyer. (main verb)

He is singing. (auxiliary verb)

Subject	Past
I/He/She/It	was
We/You/They	were

Present participle	Past participle
being	been

Be Question Forms

If the main verb of the sentence is 'to be', the question form is:

Statement	Question
I am Adam.	Am I Adam?
He is a doctor.	Is he a doctor?

If the sentence has a main verb and the auxiliary verb is 'to be', the question form is:

Statement	Question
We are staying at the hotel.	Are we staying at the hotel?
He is watching television.	Is he watching television?

Be Negative Form

To be in the negative form has this structure:

Statement	Negative	Short Form
I am Ken.	I am not Ken.	-
She is happy.	She is not happy.	She isn't happy.
We are lawyers.	We are not lawyers.	We aren't lawyers.

Do

Do is an irregular verb. It has different forms:

Subject	Present	Past
I/We/You/They	do/don't	did/didn't
He/She/It	does/doesn't	did

Present participle	Past participle
Doing	done

Have

Have is an irregular verb. It has three different forms:

Subject	Present	Past
I/We/You/They	have/haven't	had/hadn't
He/She/It	has/hasn't	had

Present participle	Past participle
Having	had

Verbs

Verbs are one of the most necessary elements to make a sentence. In fact, without a verb, we cannot have a meaningful sentence.

Regular and Irregular Verbs

Based on how we conjugate verbs in the past simple and the past participle, they can be divided into two types: Regular verbs and Irregular verbs.

Actions and States

'I'm loving it!' or 'I love it!' Do you want to know which one of these famous advertisement mottos are correct? You got to learn about state and action verbs!

Phrasal Verbs

Phrasal verbs are used very commonly in English, even more so in informal situations. Phrasal verbs consist of a verb and a preposition or a particle.

Transitive and Intransitive Verbs

'She smiled beautifully'. 'She started a rumor'. One of these sentences has an intransitive verb and one has a transitive one. Want to know the difference?

Ditransitive Verbs

Ditransitive verbs are transitive verbs that take two objects. A direct object and an indirect object. Follow the article to read more about them.

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