Present and Past Participles

The first page introduces the fundamental concepts of present and past participles, along with their formation and usage in participle constructions.

Present participles are formed by adding -ing to the infinitive verb and replace active clauses. For example, "The girl playing guitar was Zoe" demonstrates the active playing of the girl.

Example: The girl playing guitar was Zoe.

Past participles use the third form of the verb and replace passive clauses.

Example: The song sung by Zoe was beautiful.

This page also introduces the perfect participle, which is used to clearly express that one action occurred before another. It is formed differently for active and passive constructions:

• Active: having + past participle • Passive: having + been + past participle

Example: Not having learned enough Spanish at school, she found talking to the Spanish boy very difficult.

Example: Having been interviewed, Naomi thought she made a bad impression.

These examples illustrate how perfect participles can concisely convey complex temporal relationships between actions.