What Are Verbs?: WASSCE English Language

If nouns are the things a sentence is about, verbs are what those things do. Every complete sentence in English needs a verb. Without one, you have a fragment, not a sentence. Aminata to the market — not a sentence. Aminata walked to the market — sentence. The single word walked is the engine that turns a list of words into a meaningful statement.

This lesson opens the verb topic by answering three questions: what a verb is, what kinds of work verbs do (action, state, and linking), and how to identify a verb on sight. The seven lessons that follow break verbs down into the categories WAEC tests — main and auxiliary, transitive and intransitive, regular and irregular, finite and non-finite, modal auxiliary, phrasal, and the common verb errors that drop essay marks.

By the end of this topic you will not just recognise verbs. You will use them with the precision that distinguishes a strong WAEC essay from a weak one.

Definition

A verb is a word that expresses an action (run, jump, write, eat), a state (be, seem, become, exist), or a relationship (have, own, contain). Every complete sentence must contain at least one verb. The verb is the centre of the sentence — every other word in the sentence relates to it.

The three kinds of work verbs do

Verbs fall into three broad functional groups based on what kind of meaning they carry.

1. Action verbs

These describe something a subject does. They are the easiest to spot.

Physical actions: walk, run, jump, eat, drink, cook, write, read, build, throw, kick, drive, fly, swim, climb.

Aminata walked to school.
The farmer planted cassava.
Foday kicked the ball into the net.

Mental actions: think, believe, know, understand, remember, forget, imagine, decide, hope, wonder.

I think the answer is C.
Mariama remembered her mother's birthday.
We understood the lesson.

Mental action verbs are still actions — they happen inside the mind rather than out in the world, but they are things the subject does.

2. State (or being) verbs

These describe a condition or state of existence. The subject is something rather than doing something.

The main one is the verb to be (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been).

Aminata is a student.
The market was crowded.
We are ready.
The mangoes were sweet.

Other state verbs: seem, appear, become, remain, stay, look (when meaning seem), feel, taste, smell, sound.

Mariama seems tired.
The soup tastes delicious.
The students remained quiet.

Notice that some of these verbs (taste, smell, feel, look) can be either action or state depending on the sentence:

The cook tasted the soup. — action; the cook performed the tasting.
The soup tasted good. — state; the soup had a quality.

The meaning, not the spelling, tells you which.

3. Linking verbs

Linking verbs are state verbs that link the subject to a description or a renaming. The verb to be is the most common linking verb, but so are seem, become, appear, remain, grow (when meaning become), and turn (when meaning become).

Aminata is a student. — is links Aminata to student; both refer to the same person.
Foday became a teacher. — became links Foday to teacher.
The weather grew colder. — grew links the weather to colder.
Her face turned red. — turned links her face to red.

Linking verbs are tested in Lesson 3 of this topic when we cover transitive vs intransitive verbs — they are a special category that takes a complement, not an object.

Worked example

Identify the verb in each sentence and decide whether it expresses action, state, or linking.

Aminata cooked jollof rice for the family.
The mangoes look ripe.
Foday remembered his sister's birthday.
Mariama is a doctor in Freetown.
The teacher punished the latecomers.
The students remained silent during the test.

Work through them:

cooked — action (Aminata did the cooking)
look — state/linking (the mangoes have a quality; look links mangoes to ripe)
remembered — action (mental action; remembering is something Foday did)
is — linking (links Mariama to doctor)
punished — action (the teacher did the punishing)
remained — state/linking (links students to silent)

How to identify a verb on sight

Three tests catch almost every verb in English. If a word passes one of them, it is almost certainly a verb.

Test 1: The tense test

Verbs change form to show tense — past, present, future. If you can put the word into a different time and it still makes sense, the word is a verb.

walk → walked, walks, walking, will walk — verb
think → thought, thinks, thinking, will think — verb
book → ?? — book does not have a clear past or future form that fits naturally; book is a noun (though it can also be a verb meaning to reserve)

Test 2: The subject test

A verb has a subject — a noun or pronoun that performs the action or has the state. If you can put I, you, he, she, it, we, they in front of the word and form a sentence, the word is a verb.

I walk ✓ → walk is a verb
I think ✓ → think is a verb
I happy ✗ → happy is not a verb (it is an adjective; you need I am happy)

Test 3: The to test

Most verbs have an infinitive form beginning with to: to walk, to think, to be, to read. If you can naturally put to in front of the word, the word is a verb.

to walk ✓ → verb
to think ✓ → verb
to book ✓ → verb (yes — to book a flight; it can be a verb)
to chair ✓ → verb (to chair a meeting); also a noun
to quickly ✗ → not a verb (quickly is an adverb)

These three tests overlap, and most verbs pass all of them. Use whichever feels easiest in the moment.

What looks like a verb but is not

Two traps:

Gerunds — -ing forms that act as nouns

A word ending in -ing is not always a verb. When it names an activity, it is a gerund — a noun, not a verb.

Swimming is good exercise. — swimming names the activity; subject of is; noun (gerund).
Aminata is swimming. — swimming describes the action she is doing; part of the verb phrase is swimming; verb.

We covered gerunds in Topic 2, Lesson 1 (Nouns). In this topic, we will cover the -ing form as part of continuous tenses and as a non-finite verb in Lesson 5.

Participles used as adjectives

The past participle of a verb (-ed, -en forms) can also function as an adjective when it sits before a noun.

Aminata boiled the rice. — boiled is a verb (Aminata did the boiling).
The boiled rice was delicious. — boiled is an adjective (describing the rice).

The same word, two different jobs. The test is the same as for nouns: ask what the word is doing in the sentence.

In Sierra Leone

A short morning in Freetown shows verbs of all three types working together:

Aminata woke up before dawn. She felt tired but was determined. She walked to the kitchen, boiled water for tea, and prepared breakfast for her younger brother. Foday seemed sleepy when he came in, but the smell of the eggs made him smile. "You are the best sister," he said. Aminata laughed. "And you will be late for school if you don't eat quickly."

Verbs by type:

Action: woke up, walked, boiled, prepared, came, made, said, laughed, eat
State / linking: felt, was, seemed, are, will be

Every sentence has at least one verb. Strip them all out and only a list of nouns and connectives remains — meaningless.

Why verbs matter in WAEC English

Verbs carry more responsibility in a sentence than any other word. They determine:

The tense of the sentence — when the action happened
The voice — whether the subject acts or is acted on (active vs passive)
The mood — whether the sentence is a statement, command, question, or hypothesis
The agreement with the subject (singular subject → singular verb)
Whether the sentence needs an object (transitive verbs need one; intransitive verbs do not)

Nearly every grammar rule on the WAEC syllabus depends on the verb. Subject-verb concord, tense, active and passive voice, direct and indirect speech, conditional sentences — all of these are verb-based topics. The work we do in this lesson and the next seven is the foundation for everything that follows.

Common mistake

Three common errors to start watching for now:

1. Sentence without a verb.

❌ Aminata to the market with her sister.
✓ Aminata went to the market with her sister.

A prepositional phrase (to the market) is not a verb. Every sentence needs at least one true verb.

2. Confusing a gerund or participle for the only verb.

❌ Mariama swimming in the pool every morning.
✓ Mariama swims in the pool every morning.
✓ Mariama is swimming in the pool every morning.

Swimming alone is not a finite verb. It needs a helper (is, was) to be the main verb, or it must be changed to swims.

3. Two main verbs in conflict.

❌ Foday is goes to school.
✓ Foday is going to school. (continuous tense — is + going)
✓ Foday goes to school. (simple present)

You cannot stack two finite verbs back to back without a connecting word. We cover this fully in Lesson 2 when we look at auxiliaries.

WAEC tests this

Verb-related questions appear in every WAEC paper. As a foundation skill, identifying verbs is rarely tested directly, but it underpins:

Subject-verb concord — you cannot pick the right verb form without identifying the verb
Tense — every tense question depends on locating the verb and judging its time
Active and passive voice — both require finding the verb and the subject-object relationship
Error identification — many WAEC errors involve a misformed or misplaced verb

Master verb identification first; everything else builds on it.

Quick self-check

Identify the verb (or verbs) in each sentence and decide whether each is action, state, or linking. Answers below.

Aminata writes excellent essays.
The mangoes were very sweet this season.
Foday felt the cold water on his hands.
The headmaster announced the holiday.
Mariama is becoming a fine doctor.
The smell of jollof rice filled the kitchen.

Answers

writes — action
were — linking (links mangoes to sweet)
felt — action (Foday actively felt the water with his hands — physical sensation)
announced — action
is becoming — linking verb phrase (links Mariama to doctor); is is the auxiliary, becoming is the main verb
filled — action (the smell did the filling)

What's next

In the next lesson we look at the structural division of verbs into main verbs (the verb that carries the main meaning) and auxiliary verbs (helper verbs that combine with the main verb to form different tenses, questions, and negatives). The verbs be, have, and do are the main auxiliaries — small, common words that appear in nearly every English sentence and produce some of the most-tested errors in WAEC English.

What Are Verbs?