“let’s start at the very beginning…”. To find the verb in a sentence, change the tense (or...

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“let’s start at the very beginning…” VERBS AND SUBJECTS

Transcript of “let’s start at the very beginning…”. To find the verb in a sentence, change the tense (or...

Page 1: “let’s start at the very beginning…”. To find the verb in a sentence, change the tense (or time) of the sentence by saying “yesterday, every day, and.

“let’s start at the very beginning…”

VERBS AND SUBJECTS

Page 2: “let’s start at the very beginning…”. To find the verb in a sentence, change the tense (or time) of the sentence by saying “yesterday, every day, and.

To find the verb in a sentence, change the tense (or time) of the sentence by saying “yesterday, every day, and tomorrow” at

the beginning of the sentence.

When you change the tense or the time, the verb will change automatically. Notice that every word in all three sentences is exactly the same, except for the verb!

VERBS

Page 3: “let’s start at the very beginning…”. To find the verb in a sentence, change the tense (or time) of the sentence by saying “yesterday, every day, and.

YesterdaySteve ate pizza. (past

tense)

Every day Steve eats pizza.

(present tense)

Tomorrow Steve will eat pizza.

(future tense)

Page 4: “let’s start at the very beginning…”. To find the verb in a sentence, change the tense (or time) of the sentence by saying “yesterday, every day, and.

Sometimes you may wonder how many words to mark for the verb.

• You already know that in future tense (tomorrow) the verb is two words. Sometimes the verb can even be three (or four!) words working together. How do you know how many words to mark?

• Mark the word that changes when you change the time. Then look right next to that word and see if there are any more words that seem to be working with the word you marked. Mark them too.

Page 5: “let’s start at the very beginning…”. To find the verb in a sentence, change the tense (or time) of the sentence by saying “yesterday, every day, and.

The good news is that for practical grammar, it really doesn’t matter if you mark

every verb word. What matters is that you can tell if

there is a verb in the sentence.

Page 6: “let’s start at the very beginning…”. To find the verb in a sentence, change the tense (or time) of the sentence by saying “yesterday, every day, and.

Anytime you analyze a sentence, always find the verb first. Then you can do the second step: find the subject by asking yourself, “who or what did the verb?”

Brittany baked some fudge brownies. Tomorrow Brittany will bake some fudge brownies. Every day Brittany bakes some fudge brownies.

SUBJECTS

Page 7: “let’s start at the very beginning…”. To find the verb in a sentence, change the tense (or time) of the sentence by saying “yesterday, every day, and.

The word that changed when I changed the tense was “baked”, so baked is the verb.

Now, to find the subject ask yourself, “Who or what did the verb?” Say “who or what” and then say the verb and read the rest of the sentence to

the end.

Who or what baked some fudge brownies?

The answer, of course, is Brittany. Mark the subject with a single underline.

Brittany baked some fudge brownies.

Page 8: “let’s start at the very beginning…”. To find the verb in a sentence, change the tense (or time) of the sentence by saying “yesterday, every day, and.

In most of the sentences we write in English, the subject of the sentence comes before the

verb. In some tricky sentences, the subject can

come after the verb, but that doesn’t happen too often. So look in front of the verb to

find the subject.

Page 9: “let’s start at the very beginning…”. To find the verb in a sentence, change the tense (or time) of the sentence by saying “yesterday, every day, and.

Sometimes a sentence can have more than one subject. Two people may be doing something

together. This is called a COMPOUND SUBJECT.

Katie and Jake swim at the YMCA.

The verb is SWIM. To find the subject, ask yourself “Who swims at the YMCA?” Katie and

Jake both swim. They are two subject sharing one verb, so underline both names, like this:

Katie and Jake swim at the YMCA.

COMPOUND SUBJECTS

Page 10: “let’s start at the very beginning…”. To find the verb in a sentence, change the tense (or time) of the sentence by saying “yesterday, every day, and.

Notice that I did not underline the word “AND”. “AND” is not a subject. Would you

say “And swims at the YMCA”? No.

Page 11: “let’s start at the very beginning…”. To find the verb in a sentence, change the tense (or time) of the sentence by saying “yesterday, every day, and.

You might wonder how many words to underline for each subject. Sometimes you need to underline two or three words, but

usually it’s best to underline only one word.

Look at these examples:

ONE WORD SUBJECTS

Page 12: “let’s start at the very beginning…”. To find the verb in a sentence, change the tense (or time) of the sentence by saying “yesterday, every day, and.

My brother is thirteen years old.

Who or what is thirteen years old? MY BROTHER. Ok, that’s right, but if you want to underline only one word,

which word would you choose? BROTHER is a better choice than MY, so just underline BROTHER.

Jessica’s room is really messy.

Who or what is really messy? JESSICA’S ROOM. Which one word would you choose? Is JESSICA really messy? (Maybe

she is, but that’s not what the sentence is about.) Is the ROOM really messy? Yes. ROOM is the best choice.

Page 13: “let’s start at the very beginning…”. To find the verb in a sentence, change the tense (or time) of the sentence by saying “yesterday, every day, and.

A word may LOOK like a verb, but if it doesn’t change when we change the tense, it’s not doing

the job of a verb in that sentence.

Sometimesa word that looks like a verb can actually be the subject of a sentence.

So, don’t get confused if the answer to your subject question: “Who or what did the verb?” happens to be a word that looks like a verb.

STRANGE SUBJECTS

Page 14: “let’s start at the very beginning…”. To find the verb in a sentence, change the tense (or time) of the sentence by saying “yesterday, every day, and.

In grammar, it doesn’t matter what a word looks like. What matters is the JOB that it is

doing in the sentence.