Tips for Teaching Grammar

Verbs: Finding the Verb using Negation

When speakers of English put a sentence into the negative, they automatically insert the not into the sentence's verb phrase. So students can find the verb or verb phrase by making the sentence negative and then looking at the words before and after not.

1. I am hungry.

I am not hungry.

2. Those two players should have been practicing last week.

Those two players should not have been practicing last week.

More specifically, the not (or its contraction, n't) almost always appears right after the word in the verb phrase that carries the number (singular or plural) and the tense. (The word will be either an added auxiliary verb or the form of the verb to be.) This fact can be useful when students need to check subject-verb agreement in number.

4. John plays baseball.

John doesn't play baseball.

5. Jane was so confident that she would get an A.

Jane was not so confident that she would get an A.

Another advantage: When a sentence is long or complex, students can have difficulty sorting out the main verb phrase from other tempting terms such as participles or nouns that refer to action. One advantage of the negation technique is that it gets them past the other potential verb candidates quickly.

5. The woman walking up and down in the hallway is waiting to be interviewed for a job.

The woman walking up and down in the hallway is not waiting to be interviewed for a job.

Adopted by Brock Haussamen from material by Rei Noguchi. Used with permission.