Teaching children English grammar can feel like navigating a maze of arbitrary rules and confusing exceptions. While parents and educators often debate the best ways to introduce language mechanics, understanding how different verb types function is a necessary step for developing writers. New research and language learning guidelines show that the secret to grammar mastery lies in balancing explicit instruction with contextual practice.
What Happened
To help learners master these mechanics, language platform Duolingo recently highlighted the roles of core English verb categories. These include the irregular verb to be, modal verbs like can and should, auxiliary verbs, and the distinction between bare and infinitive verb forms. While some rules seem simple, such as the fact that modal verbs do not change form based on the subject, putting them into practice is often challenging for young writers. For instance, Duolingo's breakdown notes that forming simple yes-or-no questions requires different word orders depending on whether a writer uses a modal verb, an auxiliary verb, or the verb to be.
The Bigger Picture
Recent academic studies reveal why children struggle with these verb forms and how teaching methods should adapt. Although modal verbs do not conjugate, a study published in ResearchGate found that students still have a 27% error rate when using them. The most common mistake is pairing a modal with a to-infinitive, such as writing "he can to go" instead of "he can go." Additionally, students struggle to form questions with modal verbs because they must invert the subject and verb rather than relying on the auxiliary "do," according to LingoHarvest.
For highly irregular verbs like to be, the learning curve is even more complex. As we previously reported, grammar mistakes are often a sign of progress. Linguistic research on irregular morphology explains that children initially memorize irregular verbs as whole-form chunks. As they learn general rules, they often regress temporarily, a process called U-shaped development, by overapplying regular rules to irregular verbs. This results in errors like "runned" instead of "ran."
The debate over how to teach these rules is shifting. A large-scale randomized controlled trial published in the Journal of Writing Research evaluated England's "Englicious" grammar curriculum. The study found that explicit grammar lessons had no measurable effect on the narrative writing quality of children aged six to seven. However, for older primary students learning English as a foreign language, a study in IGI Global showed that pairing explicit grammar instruction with collaborative writing tasks improved grammatical accuracy.
What This Means for Families
These findings show that language instruction cannot be one-size-fits-all. Young native English speakers learn best when grammar is integrated naturally into reading and writing, rather than through dry worksheets. A study in The Journal of Interdisciplinary Human Studies showed that teaching language in context, rather than using rote word lists, increases long-term retention by 34%. For older students or those learning English as an additional language, explicit rules about modals and auxiliary verbs help prevent common syntax traps, provided those rules are practiced in real-world writing.
What You Can Do
Instead of asking children to memorize list conjugations, read together and discuss how verbs change meaning in different stories.
When children write sentences with modals, gently remind them that words like can, should, and must do not need "to" before the next verb.
Have children work together on short stories where they must use specific auxiliary verbs to build complex sentences, such as practicing the present progressive tense.