Unit 1: The Parts of Speech
Noun—a person, place, thing, or idea
Person: boy Kate mom
Place: house Minnesota ocean
Thing: car desk phone
Idea: freedom prejudice sadness
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Pronoun—a word that takes the place of a noun.
Instead of… Kate – she car – it
A few other pronouns: he, they, I, you, we, them,
who, everyone, anybody, that, many, both, few
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Adjective—describes a noun or pronoun
Answers the questions what kind, which one, how
many, and how much
Articles are a sub category of adjectives and include
the following three words: a, an, the
old car (what kind) that car (which one) two cars (how many)
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Verb—action, condition, or state of being
Action (things you can do)—think, run, jump,
climb, eat, grow
Linking (or helping)—am, is, are, was, were
Name:
Adverbs—describe verbs, adjectives, and other
adverbs
Answers the questions how, when, where, and to
what extent
Many words ending in “ly” are adverbs: quickly,
smoothly, truly
A few other adverbs: yesterday, ever, rather, quite,
earlier
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Prepositions—show the relationship between a
noun or pronoun and another word in the sentence.
They begin a prepositional phrase, which has a
noun or pronoun after it, called the object.
Think of the box (things you have do to a box).
Some prepositions: over, under, on, from, of, at,
through, in, next to, against, like
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Conjunctions—connecting words.
Connect ideas and/or sentence parts.
FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
A few other conjunctions are found at the beginning
of a sentence: however, while, since, because
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Interjections—show emotion. Usually the first
word(s) and are set off from the rest of the sentence
by a comma (,) or exclamation point (!).
A few interjections: wow, bam, gee, ha, aha, ouch
HINT: many people mix up pronouns and adjectives—think about how it is being used in the sentence!
Many girls went to the dance. (many is an adjective describing how many girls)
Many went to the dance. (many is a pronoun, replacing the noun girls)
HINT: many people mix up adverbs and prepositions—think about how the word is used in the sentence!
I looked down. (down is an adverb describing where I looked)
I looked down the river. (down is a preposition, starting the phrase down the river)
HINT: many people mix up adverbs and nouns—think about how the word is used in the sentence!
The test is tomorrow. (tomorrow is an adverb answering when the test is)
Tomorrow will be beautiful! (tomorrow is a noun!)