Verbs: Participles
A Participle is a form of a verb that can function as part of a verb phase, or independently as an adjective or an adverb.
- working man (adjective)
- broken heart (verb)
- asking me (adverb)
1. Present Participles are forms of verbs that express a non-completed or continuing action. They are used with auxiliary verbs ‘be’ and ‘have’ to make continuous tenses, such as Present Continuous, Present Perfect Continuous, etc.
- It is raining all day long.
- The choir was singing beautiful chants.
- Cindy and Shaun have been spending their vacation at the sea.
| Note: When -ing forms are used as verbs, adjectives or adverbs, they are called Present Participles. They can refer to present, past or future.
When -ing forms are used like nouns, they are called gerunds. |
To form the Present Participle we add ‘-ing’ to the base form of the verb:
- to play → playing
- to hide → hiding
- to swim → swimming
| Note: Spelling of some verb base forms changes a bit when adding ‘-ing’. For spelling rules, see Present Continuous: statements in the Pre-intermediate course. |
2. Past Participles are forms of verbs that express a completed action. They are used with auxiliary verb ‘have’ to form perfect tenses such as Present Perfect, Past Perfect, etc., and Passive voice.
- I have passed the exam and I am very happy.
- Jane had planned to take the kids to the beach, but the weather changed.
- We have finished our work for today.
In most cases (for regular verbs), to form the Past Participle we add ‘-ed’ to the base form of the verb:
- to listen → listened
- to like → liked
- to drop → dropped
| Note: spelling of some verb base forms changes a bit when adding ‘-ed’. For spelling rules, see Past Simple: statements in the Beginner course. |
Some common verbs in English have irregular Past Participle forms:
- I don’t feel (base form) quite well today.
- I haven’t felt (past participle form) very well for over a week now.
- Helen has gone to Madrid. She will be back next Sunday.
- Mary has done her homework perfectly, her mam’s glad.
- The police have found the suspect within three hours.
| Note: for the list of Past Simple and Past Participle forms of irregular verbs see Verbs: irregular in the Pre-Intermediate course. |