Verb forms | Worked example
About this video
This SAT reading-and-writing item tests verb form. The blank needs a verb that places the sugars' arrival in the past, because the other verbs in the passage describe past events. The video shows how to identify a verb-form question, use the surrounding tense clues and helper verbs, and eliminate choices whose tense does not fit.
You'll be able to
- recognise a verb-form question from the answer choices
- use time clues and other verbs in the passage to choose a tense
- use helper verbs to check that tenses match
Key words
- Verb form
- The shape a verb takes to show tense, aspect and agreement.
- Tense
- Whether an action is in the past, present or future.
- Aspect
- How an action unfolds in time, such as whether it is ongoing or finished.
- Helper verb
- A small verb, such as was, had or will, that works with the main verb to show tense.
- Subject-verb agreement
- The rule that a verb's form must match whether its subject is singular or plural.
Transcript
- [Instructor] Hey there, test takers. Let's take a look at this question from the reading and writing test. "If simple sugars such as ribose and glycolaldehyde blank Earth from elsewhere and survived impact, a possibility astrophysicist Nicolle Zellner outlined in a 2020 study, the sugars could have reacted with other molecules that were already present on the planet to form the nucleotides that are the structural components of RNA and DNA.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?" All right, and the answer choices are all different forms of the verb to reach. If you wanna give this question a try before I work through it with you, pause the video now and go for it.
And now we'll do it together. Space sugar, let's go! So the question stem, this part here, tells us that this is a grammar question. That's what "conventions of Standard English" means. And from the choices, we can figure out what's being tested. Something to do with verbs, right?
And so, let's do a quick check. Is this a subject-verb agreement question? The subject of the sentence is sugars, plural. So are all the choices compatible with a plural subject? Let's see. Sugars had reached. Sugars are reaching. Sugars reach. Sugars will reach.
No subject-verb disagreement there. And all the choices offer different helping verbs and endings of the main verb. So that means this question is about verb form. Verb form has a few different facets. Things like tense and aspect. Verb tense and aspect are all about when a verb is happening.
Tense tells us if we're talking about past, present, or future, and aspect is even more specific. Is the action still happening? Did it just finish? Will it finish happening in the future? Stuff like that. Your job for these questions is to determine the most logical form of a verb for its sentence.
I don't want us to get too in the weeds here. I could spend weeks poking at the fine distinctions of verb form, and that's extremely not what we're about right now. I want you to be able to quickly identify the right verb form and move on to the next question.
We can contemplate verb forms for fun some other time. The good news is is this. You already know this stuff, even if you don't know the grammar labels for it. Watch, here's as grammatically incorrect sentence. "Last year, I am visiting relatives in Detroit, Michigan."
That probably sounds weird to you. I'm talking about something that happened last year. Shouldn't I be using last year verb forms? Let me do it correctly. "Last year, I visited relatives in Detroit, Michigan." So, am visiting became visited. A great way to keep an eye out for these questions is to look at the tense of the helper verbs.
Those little words like and or was or have or had. Let's talk about strategy. So, you've identified a verb forms question. Now what? First step, check the time. Passages can give you context clues about when an action is happening. Other relevant verbs conjugated in a given tense or years or events from the past.
If you see a verb among the choices that doesn't make sense with that time frame, knock it out of the running. Next step, make sure the tenses match. This applies to the little helper verbs too. If you're looking for past tense, and you see an is rather than a was or a were, you can eliminate that choice.
That's pretty much it. Keep those two things in your mind as we return to the question. I've already read this passage aloud, so let's just look for other verbs in the passage. Okay, so we've got survived, outlined, could have reacted, and were. We should focus on the verbs from the space impact narrative and not outlined which is sort of outside that story.
All these verbs tell me that these sugars showed up in the past. So, let's see if there are any choices that use past tense. Had reached, past. Are reaching, present. Reach, present. Will reach, future. Okay, so, we've only got one choice that puts the arrival of the sugars in the past, and that's choice A.
Note that the SAT doesn't offer two choices in the past tense. We don't have to choose between reached and have reached. Sweet, that's it. Question done. One top tip here for this sort of question. Look for context clues. You want clues about time period or other relevant verbs.
And this question was straight forward. There was another verb that shared the same subject and it told us we were looking for a past tense verb. Okay. Good luck out there, test takers, you've got this.
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