Main Verbs and Helping Verbs Worksheet

One of the essential grammar chapters that are taught to students in their primary classes is verbs. Verbs are basically action words, i.e. it denotes the action/event that the subject does. Verbs play an essential role in clearing the basic concepts of grammar. Once the students understand the basic concept of verbs, it becomes easier to teach them about main verbs and helping verbs. Knowing about main verbs and helping verbs will help students to solve main verbs and helping verbs worksheets easily.

Main Verbs (Principal Verbs)

Main verbs (principal verbs) are verbs that denote what action/state the subject is in. In a sentence, main verbs are used independently. For example, “The dog barks at night.” Here, ‘barks’ is the principal verb. Main verbs can be divided into two classes, i.e. transitive verbs and intransitive verbs.

• Transitive Verbs – Transitive verbs are those verbs that transfer/shift the action from the subject/ the doer to an object. In simple terms, transitive verbs need an object to make sense clear. For example, “The child hits the ball.” Here, the verb ‘hits’ gets passed from the subject/doer ‘child’ to the object ‘ball’.
• Intransitive Verb – Intransitive verbs are those kinds of verbs that don’t require any object to make its sense clear. For example, “Child laughs.” Here, the intransitive verb is ‘laughs’ as it doesn’t get transferred to the object from the doer/subject.

Helping Verbs (Auxiliary Verbs)

Helping verbs (auxiliary verbs) are verbs that support the main (principal verbs) to express their tenses, voices or moods. For example, “Sammy was playing basketball”. Here, the helping verb ‘was’ is used to express the tense of the main verb ‘playing’, i.e. past continuous tense. Auxiliary verbs (helping verbs) can be categorised into two types, namely the primary helping verbs and the modal helping verbs.

• Primary Helping Verbs – These are the most common kind of helping verbs used to determine the main verb’s tense, mood or voice. Primary verbs include ‘Be, Have and Do’ forms.
• Modal Helping Verbs – On the contrary, modal helping verbs, instead of helping the main verb express tenses, are used to express possibility, probability and necessity. Modal helping verbs include can, could, will, would, shall, should, must, may, might and ought to.

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