When it comes to the most versatile part of speech in a sentence, you could say verbs rule. You can make an entire sentence out of one verb. For example, “Stop!” See, that’s a sentence! You can’t make a sentence with any other part of speech. Nouns cannot make a one-word sentence, nor can adjectives, adverbs, or any other part of speech.
But verbs do have something in common with nouns. Like nouns, there are different kinds of verbs. There are action verbs, linking verbs, helping verbs, regular verbs and irregular verbs. Let’s take a look at action verbs.
What are action verbs?
Identifying an action verb is really pretty easy. Talking is something that John can do!
Walk! Run! Cough! Drink!
All of these words show some kind of action. They express something that a person, animal, or object can do. That’s why we call them action verbs.
Examples of action verbs
Reaching is something Mary can do–especially if she doesn’t want to get wet.
Watching is something that Jennifer can do.
Churning and boiling is something water can do.
If you’re having trouble deciding if a particular word is an action verb or not, go through every word in the sentence and ask yourself, “Is this something a person or thing can actually do?”
Take a look at the sentence below:
Can you after? Is after something you can do? Can you sunrise? Have you ever seen anyone sunrise? Can you Farmer John? Can you work? Yes, you can! Can you at? I sure can’t. Can you his? Can you chores?
Obviously, there is only one action verb in the above sentence: worked.
Here’s a little story for more practice in recognizing action verbs.
Could you pick out the action verbs in that story? Action verbs are used when you want to show action or somebody doing something. The action verbs in this story are underlined.
A few more things to remember:
Action verbs can also be mental actions or things that can be seen, such as: Mary thought about her homework. She wanted a good grade.
Action verbs can have a present tense, past tense, or future tense. Examples:
Action verbs can also use a helping verb. For example,
You see, it really is easy to identify action verbs in a sentence. All you have to do is determine if it’s something that somebody or something could do and then you have it!