Participles

What they are: Participles are verbs with a variety of endings, most of them overlapping with past tense.  They are used as adjectives.

How they’re formed: Action verb + -ing, -d, -ed, -t, -en, -n

How they’re used: Participles are used as adjectives.  They will always come before a noun in a sentence. 

Note: Often participles are the hardest to identify.  Not only do they share endings with past-tense verbs, but sometimes they look like gerunds (which also end in -ing).  Other times they’re hard to spot because nouns usually follow action verbs.  They trick is to ask yourself whether the verb is showing the action of the subject, acting as an adjective, or describing the noun that follows. 

Examples: I lost my only pair of running shoes.  Nobody likes burnt toast.  We enjoyed looking at the fallen leaves last fall.  The number of raised hands showed the class’ confusion.

Practice!  Participle…or not?

                I like running.

                Please enjoy a sample of baked goods.

                The tree was uprooted.

                I am running late.

                You sound like a broken record.

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Answers

                No – gerund

                Yes

                Yes (acting as a predicate adjective, but uprooted still describes tree)

                No (verb)

                Yes