Parts of Speech: Study and Check Your Comprehension

Some of the parts of speech in English are:

• nouns (a person, place or thing--house, lesson, Laney)
• pronouns (I, you, he, she, we, they, me, him, her, us, them)
• verbs (go, sit, study, have, be)
• adjectives (big, beautiful, old, difficult)
• adverbs (quickly, beautifully, hard)
• prepositions (in, on, of, before)
• conjunctions (for, and, but, so, because, if, although)
• interjections (wow! ugh! gee!)

The parts of speech are the building blocks for sentences, so understanding how they work and being able to identify them is valuable to readers and writers.  

Also, it's important to know that some words can function as different parts of speech depending on how they are used in the sentence.  Let's look at the word "running".

• Running is great exercise.  - In this sentence running is a noun.
• She is running four miles a day to keep in shape. - In this sentence, running functions as part of the verb in "is running". 
• I'm keeping a running tally of how many students are checking into Canvas every day.  Running in this sentence is used as an adjective. 

Being able to identify and understand parts of speech helps us to say what we mean and use correct grammar. 

Listen to this explanation:

You can take the quiz three times. The highest score will count for a grade.

After the third time, you can see the answers.