Question Tags with the Verb “am”

Objective: Construct question tags with the verb “am” Prerequisite: Basic rules of forming question tags. There are three basic rules in forming question tags. 1) When the sentence is positive, the question tag will be negative. 2) When the sentence is negative, the question tag will be positive. 3) Use the auxiliary verb in the statement to form the question tag. We will start our lesson by looking at negative sentences. Give the correct question tags for the following sentences. 1) I am not reading. 2) I am not playing. 3) I am not sleeping. 4) I am not resting. Now let us find out how you fared with the exercise. 1) I am not reading, am I? 2) I am not playing, am I? 3) I am not sleeping, am I? 4) I am not resting, am I? Try your hand and make your own sentences. You can borrow mine from the previous lesson but make sure you turn them into negative sentences first. Now let us look at positive sentences. This does provide a problem. The auxiliary verb in our sentences will be “am”. But what is the negative of am. We saw that in the sentences above we used am not. Question tags are made using the contracted (shortened) form of an auxiliary verb. You naturally will be tempted to use amn’t I? This is wrong. The correct negative tag is aren’t I? Aren’t (pronounced ant) We are now good to go, aren’t we? Give the correct question tag for the following sentences. 1) I am ill. 2) I am happy. 3) I am sad. 4) I am angry. 5) I am clean. 6) I am dirty. 7) I am hungry. 8) I am satisfied. 9) I am thirsty. 10) I am tired. Well, I will supply the answers to the first three items just to give you confidence that you are on the right track. 1) I am ill, aren’t I? 2) I am happy, aren’t I? 3) I am sad, aren’t I?

The “Be” verb (A4)

Objective: Construct sentences using the verb “am”. A verb is an action or state word. Today we will look at state verbs. State verbs do not tell us what somebody does. They tell us the state or condition somebody is in. Therefore, a state verb is a word that tells us the state or condition somebody is in. The “be verbs” are state verbs. There are five be verbs: am, is, are, was and were. In this post we will look at the verb “am”. What would you like to become in the future? We can make a very long list: a teacher, a pilot, a doctor, a musician, an actor, an athlete, a footballer, a farmer, a journalist, a mechanic etc. Now each of these people can tell us who they are using the verb am. 1) I am a teacher. 2) I am a pilot. 3) I am a doctor. 4) I am a musician. 5) I am an actor. 6) I am an athlete. 7) I am a footballer. 8) I am a farmer. 9) I am a journalist. 10) I am a mechanic. 11) I am a pupil. The verb am can also be used to tell us how you feel or what condition you are in e.g. ill, happy, sad, angry, clean, dirty, hungry, satisfied, thirsty tired etc. 1) I am ill. 2) I am happy. 3) I am sad. 4) I am angry. 5) I am clean. 6) I am dirty. 7) I am hungry. 8) I am satisfied. 9) I am thirsty. 10) I am tired. The verb “am” is also used as a helping verb. In other words it is used alongside another verb. In this way we are able to construct the present continuous aspect. We will make a list of verbs in the –ing form: sitting, walking, writing, running, jumping, eating, reading, playing, sleeping, resting etc. 1) I am sitting. 2) I am walking. 3) I am writing. 4) I am running. 5) I am jumping. 6) I am eating. 7) I am reading. 8) I am playing. 9) I am sleeping. 10) I am resting. We have looked at three ways of using the verb “am”. Now make three sentences from each section. In the next post we shall look at question tags with the verb “am”.

Simple Past Passive Verb (supplementary material)

It is unfortunate that I can not use tables in the blog. Some aspects of grammar are best taught using tables. Even so we can still do a good job without them. I got feedback from one of my students and I understood the real problem second language learners of English have. Their problem arises from having very few English words. The lesson could therefore begin with one making a list of nouns of the things in their environment for example table, chair, pen, window, and book. The next task is to think of actions that can be done to these nouns. Table-make, paint. Chair-clean. Pen- buy, throw. Window –wash, shut. Book –read, sell. The next task would be to ensure that all the verbs are in the past tense. Then turn the verb into a passive verb. made – was made. Paint –was painted. Clean – was cleaned. Buy – was bought. Wash – was washed. Throw –was thrown. Shut – was shut. Read – was read. Sell – was sold. Finally, start your sentences with the subject that you had come up with and then finish it with the correct passive verb form e.g. The table was made. You should be able to make eight more sentences. Remember that if what is in the subject position is plural then you must use a plural verb e.g. “The plates were washed” and not “The plates was washed”. Have fun making sentences. Remember this lesson should be used alongside the first lesson on The Past Simple Passive. The next post will be on the "Be verbs"

Question Tags with the Verb “Have”

Well I do hope that you have had a nice time working with the verb “have” to create sentences in the present perfect aspect. The other aspect that results from the have verb is the past perfect aspect. This one presents no problem t users of English because it uses only the verb “had” e.g. I had gone to school. The only thing you need to know about the past perfect aspect is that is usually used to report two activities that are complete. Thus, I had gone to school by the time the accident occurred. Now we can turn to the lesson that I promised you yesterday: Question tags with the verb have. Objective: to construct question tags using the verb have. We will remember that when we looked at question tags with the verb do, we said that question tags are formed from auxiliary verbs in the sentence. Therefore, if a sentence has any form of the verb “have”, that is what we will use to form the tag question. Of course we now have a huge stock of sentences to use. We will begin by borrowing sentences from the have lesson. 1) I have driven this car, haven’t I? 2) You have driven this car, haven’t you? 3) They have driven this car, haven’t they? 4) We have driven this car, haven’t we? 5) Mary and John have driven this car, haven’t they? That is it. Just remember to observe the punctuation instructions. Now try and construct question tags for the sentences you had constructed for this exercise. Let’s now borrow sentences from the “has” lesson. 1) Mary has begun her music course, hasn’t she? 2) The gardener has burned the rubbish, hasn’t he? 3) The teacher has caught a thief, hasn’t she? 4) He has found the hidden treasure, hasn’t he? 5) My spouse has given me a gift, hasn’t she? 6) She has gone to school, hasn’t she? 7) The nurse has shaken the medicine bottle, hasn’t he? 8) The child has stood in the rain for long, hasn’t he? I notice that all my sentences are positive. So you can begin by changing them into the negative and then create tags for them e.g. I have not driven that car, have I? Mary has not begun her music course, has she? Finally, the perfect aspect can also be used to make tag questions. They had driven that car for five years before I bought it, hadn’t they? Well you should now use the have verb with lots of confidence. Of course I have intentionally avoided the progressive aspect because it hardly presents a problem. However, should you have any problem with me just enter your comment or contact me directly via email.

The Verb “Has”

Objective: Construct sentences using the verb “has”. As mentioned earlier, we use has for singular subjects. Thus, Mary has, it has, the town has, Kenya has, and my school has. Be careful not to construct sentences that show possession. For example, “Mary has a pen.” In this case “has” has been used as a main verb. Your sentences should look like these: 1) Mary has fed the puppy. 2) It has rained. 3) The town has won many awards. 4) Kenya has produced world class athletes. 5) My school has bought a projector. We shall now construct sentences with the verbs that formed your assignment on the verb “have”. This will help you confirm whether you got the past participle forms of those verbs. Further, it will help you make constructions with the verb “has”. 1) Mary has begun her music course. 2) The gardener has burned the rubbish. 3) The teacher has caught a thief. 4) He has found the hidden treasure. 5) My spouse has given me a gift. 6) She has gone to school. 7) The nurse has shaken the medicine bottle. 8) The child has stood in the rain for long. So, did you get the past participle forms of these verbs right? If you did, congratulations are in order. If you did not, develop a habit of using your dictionary. Now construct your own sentences using the same verbs. I will now give you another set of irregular verbs for further practice. Wake, write, tear, teach, sweep, swim, put, ride, dig and blow. Take note that the present perfect aspect is used with reference to activities completed in the recent past. In the next post we shall look at question tags with the verb have.

The Verb “Have”

Having looked at the “do” verb, let us turn our attention to the verb “have”. Objective: Construct sentences in the present perfect aspect using the verb “have”. Like the “do” verb, the “have” verb is a helping verb. Take note that you can use the verb “have” as a main verb under two circumstances. First, if you use it to mean eat e.g. We have supper at 8:00pm. Second, we use it as a main verb when referring to possession e.g. I have a pen. “I am having a pen” is wrong. The verb “have” has three forms: have, has and had. We use have and has to form the present perfect aspect. For all plural subjects and the pronoun I, we use have. Therefore we say I have, you have, they have, we have, Mary and John have. For singular subjects we use has. Thus, Mary has, it has, the town has, Kenya has, and my school has. Because the “have” verb is a helping verb, it has to be used alongside a main verb. The main verb has to be in its past participle form. Care should be taken to use the correct form of the irregular verbs. Most good dictionaries have an exhaustive list of irregular verbs. These are the verbs that do not add –ed to get the past and past participle forms. Therefore the verb “add’ is regular and so is the verb “walk”. Your sentences would look like these. 1) I have added sugar to your tea. 2) We have walked to the park. We will now turn our attention the irregular verbs. Let us start with the verb drive, shall we? The past tense is “drove” and the past participle is “driven”. Your sentences would look like these. I have driven this car. You have driven this car. They have driven this car. We have driven this car. Mary and John have driven this car. Now let us look at the verb eat. The past tense is “ate” and the past participle is “eaten”. The resulting sentences will look like these: 1) I have eaten lunch. 2) You have eaten lunch. 3) They have eaten lunch. 4) We have eaten lunch. 5) Mary and John have eaten lunch. I will now leave you with ten irregular verbs of activities that are common. Construct as many sentences as you can in the present perfect aspect. Begin, burn, catch, come, feed, find, give, go, shake, and stand. In the next post we shall look at “has”.

The Truth of the Pudding