Wild Rose Learning

Want to prevent making verb mistakes?

Verb (doing words) mistakes are most frequent in casual conversations, or when writing casual emails or social media posts.

A lot of people make them –so much so that many people may not even know that they are making any mistakes.

So, to prevent you from turning these mistakes into bad habits like a baby sucking on its thumb, here are 3 of the most common verb mistakes and how to fix them.

Subject-Verb Agreement

When you’re writing or talking, the subject of your sentences has to agree with the verb. 

Many people don’t pay attention to this.

For example, they might say, “The dog chew the bone.”

This sentence is incorrect because “dog” is singular. So, the word “chew” should also be in the singular form.

Here’s what it should look like:

“The dog chews the bone.”

An easy way to remember this is if you add an -s to the verb, it becomes singular. If you leave it, it’s a plural.

Try to fix this:

• Jennifer run to the store to pick up some milk.

Irregular Past-Tense Verbs

Many people don’t realize that irregular verbs are a thing.

So when they turn present-tense verbs into past-tense verbs, they’ll add -ed and think it’s correct.

But you can’t do that with irregular verbs because they don’t follow the same rules.

Someone, for instance, might say, “I knowed about that pothole for a while.” This is incorrect because the word “knowed” should be “knew.”

They might also use the past-tense form for the past-participle form.

For example, they’ll say, “I have knew about that pothole for a while.” This is also incorrect because “have knew” should be “have known.”

This rule can be difficult to understand at first, but if you learn and practice it in a workbook, it’ll lay out all of the words, their forms, and how to use them in the lesson.

I recommend using my grammar workbooks (find here) to learn this, but you can use any.

Try to fix this:

Billy and Andy writes a story about a boy who is stuck in a tree.

Affect vs. Effect

People tend to use the words “affect” and “effect” interchangeably without knowing which is which or even knowing that these two words are different.

So, here’s what they mean and how to use them:

• Affect is a verb.

For example, you could say that this article affected your studies positively.

• Effect is a noun.

For example, you could say that this article had a good effect on your understanding of grammar rules.

Try to fix this:

The medicine’s special affect did not help me.

Final Thoughts

Learn and apply these 3 verb rules to improve your communication.

And if you want some extra help, you can check out my grammar workbooks here.