Verbs to 'Do'

'Mr Lo, stop it!' barked the facilitator, a big Tamil woman, who had been observing me at the back of the conference room. 'You are misleading the others!'

'What's wrong?' I said in confusion. I was attending a course on the teaching of grammar, and in the midst of my group presentation, the facilitator interrupted me.

'Everyone, don't be fooled by what you see,' said the facilitator, pointing at my Powerpoint presentation. 'The instruction says fill in the blanks with the right 'Verbs to do'. But there is no such grammatical term in English. They are actually called action verbs!'

Noisy murmurs rippled through the participants, who were all teachers like me.

'With due respect, madam, it is too early to make such an assumption, ' I said in my defence. 'There are verbs to have, verbs to be, and surely there are VERBS TO DO, an alternative term for action verbs!'

'Nonsense!' shouted the bullying harridan, hitting a desk with the flat of her hand. 'I've been teaching English since 1982 but I had never heard of verbs to do until today. Where did you get the information?'

'From the Learning English Website,' I said. 'Can you look it up on the Internet?'

'Don't deceive me with such a lie,' sneered the woman. 'Many websites provide invalid information on language.'

'If you refuse to look it up,' I said, shaking my head. 'There's nothing I can do.' I swept my eyes over the now silent teachers and added, 'Whoever wishes to know about verbs to do, you may visit the Learning English Website.'

'Back to your seat!' growled the facilitator. 'Delete all the verbs to do, change them to action verbs and present the slides after break. I want no more of this junk!'

'So be it,' I said calmly, and returned to my seat.