IDENTIFY THE VERB 1

Grammar review The verb-spotting shortcut: ask "what's happening?"

Find the subject of the sentence (who or what the sentence is about).
Example: The dog barks loudly. → Subject = "The dog"

Ask "What is the subject doing?" or "What is happening to the subject?"
The dog barks loudly. → The dog does what? → barks → Verb

Check for helping verbs. Look for words like is, are, was, were, has, have, had, will, can. They often appear before the main verb:
She is reading a book. → "is" (helping) + "reading" (main)

Test the tense. Replace the word with past, present, or future forms:
run → ran → will run. If it changes with time, it's a verb.

Did you know? If you can’t identify the verb, you can’t fix the sentence — and examiners can always tell.

Verb identification is the foundation of grammatical accuracy. Subject-verb agreement errors, tense inconsistency, and passive voice mistakes all trace back to uncertainty about which word in the sentence is doing the verbal work. IELTS Grammatical Range & Accuracy and TOEFL writing both penalise these errors directly.

Cambridge Use of English (Part 2 — open cloze) frequently requires you to supply the correct form of a verb — which means identifying the verbal slot in the sentence first. This exercise trains the foundational skill that makes all other grammar work faster and more reliable.