The present participle is often used when we want to express an active action.
In English we add -ing to the infinitive of the verb.
| Progressive/ Continuous tense |
He is reading a book. |
| He was reading a book. | |
| Gerund | Reading books is fun. |
| He likes reading books. | |
| Participle | Look at the reading boy. |
| He came reading around the corner. | |
| He sat reading in the corner. | |
| I saw him reading. |
The present participle is often used when we want to express a passive action.
In English we add -ed to the infinitive of regular verbs. We use the 3rd column of the table of the irregular verbs.
| Perfect tenses | He has forgotten the pencil. |
| He had forgotten the pencil. | |
| Passive voice | A house is built. |
| A house was built. | |
| Participle | Look at the washed car. |
| The car washed yesterday is blue. | |
| He had his car washed. |
This combination is also known as perfect participle. It is used to form an active sentence with the past participle. There is a time gap between the actions.
past participle and having
| Having read the book the boy came out of the room. | One action happened after the other. |
present participle
| The boy came reading out of the room. | Both actions happened at the same time. |
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