Question

How do you change the following sentence to the past tense?: The paint is drying.

Answer 1

Hint: Try to understand the meaning of the given sentence. This will help you gauge which verb tense to use. Discover the words that point to a certain tense. Then, write the correct answer accordingly.

Complete answer: Verbs are action words that show action (sing), occurrence (develop), or state of being (exist), usually of a noun. Every sentence requires
a verb. The basic form of a verb is known as an infinitive.

We can identify the kind of verb needed when we look at the subject of the sentence. In order to do that, we need to deconstruct the given sentence:
The subject is clearly the phrase ‘the paint’. This indicates that the subject is singular. This means that only verbs that are singular can go with the given subject. The verbs that we need to look for should match the singular subject.

The past continuous tense is used to describe events that took place in the past and is constructed by adding the suffixes ‘-ing’ to later verbs. The words ‘was’ and ‘were’ are also used as helping verbs. The word ‘was’ is for singular subjects and the word ‘were’ is for plural subjects.
were - This verb is always used for the second person and third person plural, which
means that it is considered plural. This does not match the given subject. This is not the required answer. So, this is an incorrect answer.
was - This verb is used only for the first person and third person singular, which means
that it is a singular verb. This matches the given subject and it is in the simple past tense. This is the required answer. So, this is the correct answer. The rest of the sentence remains unchanged.

So, the answer is ‘The paint was drying’.

Note: The given sentence already tells us the situation. Look for pointers suggesting which
tense to use. The actions are still being completed. These pointers are indicators of a certain tense.