Organizing verbs according to conjugation is done less frequently in English than in foreign languages; however, it is still a valuable concept to learn, as it will give structure to your understanding of verbs and promote proper usage of verb tense. I first learned to conjugate a verb in 9th grade, as I had the same teacher for French I and English 9 in high school and she made both classes conjugate verbs. The structure is not too difficult, particularly for regular verbs, so there's no reason to wait until 9th grade to learn this grammatical concept.
Before proceeding to the lesson, let's first review or learn related vocabulary. You'll be able to refer back to this vocabulary during the lesson, so don't worry about memorizing any unfamiliar words:
| conjugate | to organize, in a list, the forms of a verb according to person (first, second, third) and number (singular, plural) (See example below.) |
| tense | the form of a verb that indicates time (present tense, past tense, future tense, etc.) |
| infinitive | the basic, uninflected form of a verb that follows to (to go, to walk, to run, etc.) |
| inflect | to change the form of a word to indicate certain grammatical relationships, as number, case, gender, tense, etc. (child/children, go/going) |
| regular verbs | a verb which forms its past and past participle forms by merely adding -ed or -d to the present form
e.g.,I talk (present), I talked (past), I have talked (past participle) |
| irregular verbs | a verb which forms its past and past participle in various other ways: by changing the vowels and/or consonants, or by making no change at all
e.g.,I sing (present), I sang (past), I have sung (past participle) [changing the vowel] |
TO EAT (PRESENT TENSE) |
||
|---|---|---|
| Person/Number: | Singular | Plural |
| First Person | I eat | we eat |
| Second Person | you eat | you eat |
| Third Person | he eats she eats it eats |
they eat |
