Parts of speech

I have been teaching English for many years, but I still have to face the problem of students not knowing the basic grammatical terms. I can understand them as well, as they don’t have to be keen on grammar or they don’t have to learn grammar every day. And probably there are many people who don’t like grammar at all.

But we still have to know some of the most important grammatical terms to be able to acquire a foreign language. Knowing the different parts of speech is very important.

Here is a list of the most important parts of speech:

– nouns

We use nouns to refer to different objects, places, buildings, people.

eg: dog, cat, palace, sea, table, door

– articles

There are two types of articles: definite („the”) and indefinite („a,an”)  articles.

We usually use them before nouns.

eg: a cat, a dog, an apple, the car, the film

– verbs

We use verbs to describe what a person, an object or the subject of the sentence does.

eg: The student learns.

The teacher teaches.

The alarm went off.

– adjectives

We use adjectives to describe how the different objects, places and people are.

eg: strange, funny, fast, slow

–  adverbs

We use adverbs to describe how the actions take place.

eg: well, slowly, quickly

– personal pronouns

There are different types of personal pronouns, the most important ones are:

subjective

eg: I, you, he, she

possessive

eg: my, your, her, his

objective

eg: me, you, him, us

– prepositions

There are many prepositions in English, here are some examples:

eg: in the room, on the table, for you, to you, with him, without her, from Hungary

– conjunctions

We can connect words, parts of a sentence or clauses with them.

eg: because, and, but

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