Different Auxiliary Verb Uses

Advanced Tenses

• Be and have are used in the perfect and continuous tenses.

Passive Voice

• Be is used for the passive structures. To talk about the object of sentences when you don’t know or the information is not necessary.

Emphasis

• Do/did are used to show a very strong statement. E.g. I do like hiking.

Ellipsis (avoid repetition)

• Use auxiliary verbs to avoid repeating verbs. E.g. I don’t like coffee but my brother does.

Question tags

• Matching the auxiliary verb from the statement into the tag. E.g. She has finished the report, hasn’t she?

Have something done

• Using ‘have’ in have something done to show a service that is/was done by someone else.