Phil Young’s English School · Sheet 11 of 11
Tense tells you when something happened. This sheet is about how the verb is put together: the auxiliary chains behind modals, perfects and passives, and the participles left behind when a clause loses its subject. Twelve patterns below, then thirty exercises.
Every auxiliary fixes the form of the word after it. Build the chain from the left and the last word comes out right.
After can, could, may, might, will, would, shall, should, must and had better the verb takes its bare form — no to, no -s, no -ed, no -ing. The modal carries the tense, so a past meaning is built with have plus the past participle: must have adopted, should have known. Note that ought to, have to and be able to keep their to, which is what makes the others feel unstable.
Have, has and had are followed by the past participle, never by the simple past. The irregular verbs where the two forms differ are where the error lives: go / went / gone, write / wrote / written, take / took / taken, choose / chose / chosen, begin / began / begun, rise / rose / risen, break / broke / broken, drink / drank / drunk. If the verb has three distinct forms, the third one is the one that follows have.
A passive is a form of be plus the past participle, and both halves have to be there. Two errors are common: leaving the verb in its base form (was discover) and using the -ing form (was discovering), which is active and means something quite different. Check the subject — if it is the thing done to rather than the doer, the sentence is passive and the participle is required.
However long the chain of auxiliaries, each one fixes the form of the next, and the last word is always a past participle: must be kept, has been sent, will have been completed, could be published. Build the chain from the left: the modal takes a bare form (be, have), have takes been, be takes the participle.
Do, does and did carry the tense, so the main verb returns to its base form. The same rule governs emphasis (she does know) and question tags. Where an auxiliary is already present, do is not used at all: has not arrived, not does not has arrived.
A verb that takes no object cannot be turned around, so it has no passive. The ones that appear in test items: happen, occur, take place, arrive, appear, disappear, exist, consist of, belong to, rise, fall, seem, remain, die. Watch the pairs where one member takes an object and the other does not, since only the first has a passive: rise / raise, lie / lay, fall / fell.
Make, let and have take a bare infinitive after the object; help takes either (helped them finish or helped them to finish). Have and get also build a causative passive when the object is a thing rather than a person: have the report rewritten, get the roof repaired. Be made, though, restores the to: the interns were made to record every call.
The verb in front decides. Gerund: avoid, consider, deny, delay, postpone, suggest, risk, mind, finish, enjoy, admit, recommend. Infinitive: decide, agree, refuse, offer, promise, manage, fail, hope, intend, expect. After any preposition the gerund is the only option, which is why the to in look forward to, object to and be accustomed to catches people out: look forward to receiving, not to receive.
When the subject of a clause matches the subject of the main clause, the clause can shed its subject and its tense: after she had reviewed becomes having reviewed. Use the -ing form where that subject performs the action. Having plus a past participle marks the earlier of two events; the plain -ing form marks actions that overlap. The subject still has to match — that trap is Sheet 8, pattern 1.
Where the subject receives the action rather than performs it, the reduction leaves a past participle: because it was written becomes written. Ask whether the subject did it or had it done. Signed in 1923, the treaty still holds. A being can be added where the point is an event rather than a state: being questioned by the police, he said nothing.
A relative clause containing a form of be can drop the pronoun and the be together — but not one without the other: the letters that were discovered becomes the letters discovered; the delegates who are meeting becomes the delegates meeting. Where there is no be, an -ing form still works if the meaning is active: people who live here becomes people living here. What never works is a pronoun left in front of a bare participle.
When an adverb clause is reduced, the conjunction stays and only the subject and the auxiliary go: while she was searching becomes while searching; although they were warned becomes although warned. Choose the participle by voice, exactly as in patterns 9 and 10. The conjunctions that allow this: while, when, before, after, since, although, though, if, unless, once. Because does not — it gives way to because of plus a noun, or the clause drops the conjunction altogether.
Questions 1–12. Tap the form the sentence requires.
Questions 13–22. Four parts of each sentence are underlined. Tap the one that is wrong. Only one contains an error.
Questions 23–30. Each sentence contains exactly one verb form that is wrong — and at least one other verb doing the same job correctly. Find the error, write the correction, and name the pattern behind it. Write your version in your notebook, then reveal the correction and compare.