Grammar quiz
Word classes
Words can be nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, determiners and conjunctions.
A word is defined by the job it does in a sentence. So the same word can be a different word class if it has a different function in the sentence. For example, the word run acts as a verb in this sentence:
I run down the street.
and a noun in this sentence:
I scored a run.
Another example would be green. It acts as a noun in:
They played cricket on the village green.
and as an adjective in:
It was a green door.
Nouns
Nouns are words for things, people, animals, or states of mind or existence: frog, wood, woman, tiger, toad, sorrow, fear, love, humility, hunger, coronation, palace, queen, envy, courage. These are often referred to as common nouns. Proper nouns, which need a capital letter, are names of people, places, days and months; for example, Siobhan, Aberdeen, Tuesday and December.
Compound nouns are made up of two or more words, sometimes an adjective and a noun or a noun and a noun which keep their original spelling when joined together:
breakwater, snowfall, toothbrush.
Adjectives
Adjectives are words which modify nouns: red, tall, ugly, small, cheerful, open, old. They tell us what the noun is like; for example, a red car, a tall cupboard.
Verbs
Verbs are words for actions; for example, action verbs – jump, climb, drop – or states of mind (stative verbs) – think, decide, hope, be.
Auxiliary (helping) verbs
The auxiliary verbs do, be and have help in the formation of the tenses of main verbs:
Do you like sweets? (like is the main verb; do is the auxiliary)
I am going. (going is the main verb; am is the auxiliary)
They have appeared. (appeared is the main verb; have is the auxiliary)
Do is common for asking questions, emphasising points or making negatives:
Do you want to sit down?
I do like this book.
I don’t think that is fair.
But it can also be a main verb, as in: I do the washing.
Be and Have
As auxiliary verbs, be and have help to form several tenses of other verbs:
She is going. (continuous present/present progressive)
They were dreaming. (continuous past/ past progressive)
I have been running. (continuous present perfect/progressive present perfect)
We had been hoping. (continuous past perfect/progressive past perfect)
You will be leaving. (continuous future/future progressive)
They will have been waiting for three hours. (continuous future perfect/future perfect progressive)
We have decided. (present perfect)
We had decided. (past perfect)
Modal verbs
Modal verbs are a type of auxiliary verb that indicate belief that something is certain, probable or possible. They modify or add meaning to other verbs; for example, can, will, may, shall, must, ought, need, could, might, would, should.
Regular verbs
Regular verbs follow the same pattern using ‘-ed’ in the past tense (plus ‘have’ for the past perfect) and the present tense form plus ‘will’ or ‘shall’ for the future tense:
I like ice cream.
I liked ice cream the first time I tasted it.
I have liked ice cream since I was young.
I will like ice cream forever.
I pass that house every day.
I passed the library on the way to the shops.
I have passed that bus stop every day for years.
I will pass the station at 6 o’clock.
Irregular verbs
Irregular verbs do not use the ‘-ed’ ending in past tenses, as most verbs in English do.
I see, I saw, I have seen
I run, I ran, I have run
I speak, I spoke, I have spoken
I know, I knew, I have known.
Adverbs
Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives or other adverbs, telling you how the verb is carried out; for example, strangely, very, often, well, quickly, soon.
She was acting strangely.
I very often go there.
I’m feeling well.
It was quickly done.
I’ll be there soon.
Many adverbs can be placed in different places in the sentence and still make sense:
Quickly, it was done.
It was quickly done.
It was done quickly.
The placing of the adverb depends on what the writer wants to emphasise.
Determiners
These are small but very important words that tell us something about a noun. The most common are a and the, although there are others such as this, that, some, any, my, your, its, whose, which and numbers (three, hundreds).
Prepositions
Prepositions are words or groups of two or more words which come before nouns or pronouns to indicate place, time or position:
opposite him
before lunch
between the trees.
Sometimes prepositions link two nouns or pronouns; for example, ‘She went into the house.’ Some prepositions can also act as conjunctions if they link clauses rather than single nouns/pronouns; for example, ‘I’m leaving before I say something I shall regret.’
Prepositions include: about, above, across, after, against, around, before, behind, beyond, by, down, in, into, near, off, on, opposite, out, over, round, through, towards, under, up, in front of.
Pronouns
Pronouns are words which stand in for or refer to nouns: I, mine, who, anyone, she, her, ours, myself, itself, those, who, whoever
Types of pronoun:
- personal – I, me, he, him, she, her, it, we, us, they, them
- possessive – my, mine, your, yours, his, her, hers, its, our, ours, their, theirs*
- reflexive – myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves
- demonstrative – this, that, these, those
- relative – who, whom, whose, which, whoever
- interrogative – who? whom? whose? what? which? whoever? whichever? whatever?
- reciprocal – each other, one another (used to express a two-way relationship).
*NB: possessive pronouns never need an apostrophe; for example, ‘The cat licked its paws.’
Conjunctions
Conjunctions link two words, phrases or clauses together. There are two main types:
Coordinating: linking two words, phrases or clauses together as an equal pair
- (and, but, or, so)
- This band is very well known and the venue is sold out.
- It’s getting late and I’m tired.
- I like coffee but I don’t like tea.
- We can eat now or we can wait till later.
Subordinating: introduces a subordinate clause, using when, if that, because, until, where. For example:
- We worked all night because you wanted the report.
Some definitions of punctuation marks
Apostrophes of omission
These are sometimes referred to as apostrophes of contraction. The apostrophe indicates where a letter or letters has been omitted so the word has contracted:
She’s in the garden. She is in the garden.
We’re going shopping.We are going shopping.
It’s not fair. It is not fair.
Sometimes, though, an apostrophe of omission indicates that the word has lost quite a few letters:
I can’t say.I cannot say.
I won’t go.I will not go.
One o’clock. One of the clock.
NB When using ‘its’ as a possessive pronoun, there is no apostrophe.This is easily checked by seeing if the sentence would make sense if ‘its’ were changed to ‘it is’:
The dog chased its tail.
Does not make sense as it means:
The dog chased it is tail.
Apostrophes of possession
This indicates ownership and always goes after the last letter of the word that does the owning:
The cat’s basket. (The basket of the cat.)
The lady’s house. (The house of the lady.)
In the singular form this is quite straightforward.
For plurals, it can be equally straightforward if the plural ends in ‘s’:
The cats’ baskets.(The baskets of the cats.)
The ladies’ houses.(The houses of the ladies.)
But if the plural form does not end in ‘s’ then finding the meaning is essential in order to put the apostrophe in the right place.
With the plurals ‘men’, ‘children’ and ‘sheep’ the apostrophe goes after the last letter of the word that does the owning:
The men’s books. (The books of the men.)
The children’s clothes. (The clothes of the children.)
The sheep’s tails. (The tails of the sheep.)
To check out where the apostrophe should go, just turn the phrase round:
the womens meeting – the meeting of the women.
The apostrophe goes after the last letter of the owning word, women.So it becomes the women’s meeting.
Bullet points
A bullet pointed list is introduced by a sentence stem that then leads to the items in the list. If the list is made up of full sentences, then these are punctuated as sentences at the end of each bullet. If the list is of single words or phrases there is no punctuation at the end of each item until the last one. For example:
For homework you can choose to:
- Read the next chapter of your current book.
- Complete the story that you started today in class.
- Ask someone at home to tell you about a time when they did something naughty and were told off.
Or:
You will need to use:
- plain paper
- coloured felt tips
- scissors
- glue.
Colon
A colon introduces a quotation, an explanation, an example or a series.
Quotation Noyes creates atmosphere with: ‘the wind was a torrent of
darkness.’
Explanation You have two choices: go back or go forward.
Example There are different kinds of bear: the grizzly, the polar bear, the
honey bear, to name just three.
Series You will need to do three things: take the number, inform the
supervisor and log the details.
A colon can sometimes introduce a list that is set out as bullet points.
Ellipsis
Ellipsis is a cohesive device. These are the elements that help a sentence and text to hang together. The punctuation mark for ellipsis consists of three dots to indicate that a word or words have been intentionally missed out by the writer, for example: There are many ways to get to my house. One is…
Parenthesis
Parenthesis is a way of adding more information to a sentence. It can be punctuated in three different ways:
with commas: Michael, in a hurry, dropped a plate.
with brackets: Michael (in a hurry) dropped a plate.
with dashes: Michael – in a hurry – dropped a plate.
There is no hard and fast rule for deciding which of these punctuation devices you use in creating parentheses; it is really about the effect you want. If you want to make the added information run smoothly into the sentence, you might use commas; if you want to suggest that this is additional information that is separated from the main sentence you may want to use brackets, or if you see the additional information as more of an aside, you may want to use dashes.
Semicolon
The semicolon can be seen as the medium length pause in the sequence of comma, semicolon and full stop but it does have two distinct uses:
- To link two sentences for the effect of contrast or closeness in meaning:
- To separate ideas (rather than individual words which are separated by commas) in a list, for example:
He was cold. He was weary.
These two short sentences are effective in expressing the starkness of the boy’s condition but if you wanted to show that the two are linked – that is, that he was weary mainly due to being so cold – you may prefer to use a semicolon:
He was cold; he was weary.
If you read the two examples aloud you’ll see that the second has a different rhythm from the first and rather than separating the two ideas, the first idea swings into the second.
Robots can: move their joints automatically; work accurately for hours without error; get into places humans cannot; send back information.
Speech marks
Speech marks are tricky. If a reader reads two books in a row they are likely to have different ways of setting out direct speech. For example, do the books use single or double inverted commas? In many adult novels speech is set out without any punctuation at all. It is easy to see why children would get confused by this variety of approaches to the punctuating of direct speech. Generally, however, the conventions about punctuation at the end of speech and when to start on a new line are standard.
The best way to find out about speech punctuation is to get hold of a novel for children aged eight to ten. That should show the current conventions for setting out speech punctuation.
(These definitions are taken from Reedy, D. and Bearne. E. (2013) Teaching Grammar Effectively in Primary Schools. Leicester: United Kingdom Literacy Association.)