Are you teaching a lesson on the different parts of speech in the English language? Need a refresher before an English, ESL, or creative writing course? You’re in luck! This post reviews the nine word classes or parts of speech in detail. Just keep reading.
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What are word classes?
In the English language, words are categorized based on their function. These categories are called word classes or parts of speech. There are four major word classes in English grammar, which include verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. Additionally, there are five other word classes that can be used to describe the functionality of a word. Those other parts of speech include determiners, prepositions, interjections, conjunctions, and pronouns.
9 Parts of Speech
Understanding the nine parts of speech can help students think critically about text, analyze sentence structure and write dynamic sentences of their own. So, whenever a student doesn’t understand a part of speech, share an example from the following list.
Nouns
Nouns are one of the main word classes. Nouns include words for people, places, or objects. Sometimes, nouns describe physical objects or people (i.e. chair, father, vase). In those cases, you’re working with concrete nouns. However, nouns aren’t always tangible. In other instances, you may encounter an abstract noun, which is used to describe a non-tangible thing such as love or jealousy.
Additionally, there are collective nouns which can be used to identify a group of people (i.e. union, family, band, club) and possessive nouns which are nouns that expresses ownership. Then there are proper nouns as well, which are names for specific people, geographic locations or objects, like Uganda, Thomas, or Bandaid for instance.
Examples
Concrete Nouns: Building, Car
Abstract Nouns: Love, Hate, Jealousy, Envy, Joy
Collective Nouns: Crew, Family, Friends
Proper Nouns: Uganda, South Africa, London, Cheryl
Possessive Noun Phrases: That bag is mine. The cat is hers. His shirt is cool.
Verbs
Verbs are words that indicate an action or state of being. Like nouns, verbs can be broken down into subcategories. When we discuss verbs as a word class, lexical verbs are the words that usually come to mind. The lexical category of verbs include action or state words such as jump, want, touch, and walk. However there are auxiliary verbs as well (i.e. be, is, has, do). Those verbs support the main verb in phrase, helping it to express its intended grammatical meaning
Examples
Lexical Verbs: Run, Walk, Sprint, Jump, Hop, Swim, Assist,
He walked to the grocery store after school.
Auxiliary Verbs: Was, Will, Had, Might, Could, Would, May
He was jumping on the bed when he broke his leg.
Adjectives
Within a sentence, adjectives are words that can be used to describe a feature, attribute, or state of being of the noun that’s present.
Examples
Furry, Shiny, Dull, Perfect, Quiet, Vibrant, Colorful, Monochrome, Boring
The beautiful woman wore a vibrant dress to the party.
Adverbs
Adverbs are words that describe verbs, offering additional context for when, where, and how an action is performed. Additionally, adverbs can be used to modify adjectives.
Examples
Tomorrow, Yesterday, Rapidly, Slowly, Gently, Hurriedly, Rarely, Often, Occasionally, Today
Yesterday, Thomas found a kitten. He petted it gently before searching for its owner.
Determiners
Determiners help clarify information about nouns, this can include details about the geographical local or quantity of the noun. Like nouns, pronouns, and verbs; this word class has many subcategories including articles, demonstrative pronouns, quantifiers, and cardinal numbers, ordinal numbers and difference words.
Examples
Articles: The, A, An
Demonstrative Pronouns: These, Those
Quantifiers: Few, Many, Most
Cardinal Numbers: One, Five, Seven, etc
Ordinal Numbers: Second, Third, Eighth, etc
Difference Words: Another, Other
The second boutique we visited had a better clothing selection than the other.
Many people bought tickets to the concert.
Prepositions
A preposition or prepositional phrase can be used to express the relationship between words.
Examples
Near, Through, Between, Underneath, Within
The train travelled through the tunnel rapidly.
Interjections
When a writer needs to make an exclamatory remark, they can use an interjection or two. After all, interjections are words that are used to express reactions or strong emotions. Within English literature, interjections are usually standalone words that are punctuated with an exclamation mark.
Examples
Oh! Darn! Oops! Ouch! Ahh!
Oops! I spilled my coffee.
Conjunctions
Conjunctions are words that can be used to connect or link other words, phrases or clauses. There are three main types of conjunctions. Those include correlative conjunctions coordinating conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions.
Correlative conjunctions are words that work in pairs to connect words, phrases and clauses.
Coordinating conjunctions are words that connect independent clauses together.
Subordinating conjunctions are words that connect dependent clauses to independent clauses.
Examples
Correlative Conjunctions: Neither/Nor, Either/Or, Both/And
Coordinating Conjunctions: But, Yet, So, And
Subordinating Conjunctions: Because, While, When, If, Because
Pronouns
Within a sentence, pronouns can be used to take the place of noun or noun phrase. The pronoun refers back to the concrete noun, collective noun, or proper noun that was previously stated. This is a dynamic word class that can include personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, indefinite or relative pronouns.
Examples
Personal Pronouns: She, He, They, It
Possessive Pronouns: Hers, His, Theirs, Mine, Ours
Reflexive Pronouns: Herself, Himself, Myself, Ourselves, Themselves
Indefinite Pronouns: Everyone, Anyone, Somebody, Everybody, Something
Relative Pronouns: What, Who, Which, That
