Peter Mangiaracina.

This presentation explains how auxiliary verbs support English tenses and perform other essential jobs. After reviewing common auxiliary forms, it examines their use in questions, negative sentences, short answers, emphasis, tag questions, agreement, verb substitutes, and echo questions.

The examples show how the auxiliary must match the tense and subject. They also demonstrate how auxiliaries can replace repeated information, confirm an idea, express agreement, or react with surprise.

Important points

• Questions normally contain an auxiliary unless the question word is the subject.
• Negative sentences and short answers require the appropriate auxiliary.
• Do, does, and did can add emphasis in simple present and simple past affirmative sentences.
• Tag questions use the matching auxiliary and normally reverse the positive or negative form of the statement.
• Agreement can be expressed with too, either, so, neither, and the colloquial forms me too and me neither.
• An auxiliary can replace a repeated action or form an echo question.

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