When one starts thinking about English grammar,the first thing he/she must look into is the parts of speech.Just like studying alphabets when we start studying a language,studying parts of speech is the first step we should take when we start with English grammar.

Just look at the set of words given below and pic the odd one.

India,Srilanka,Pakistan,Orange

Here one can easily pic orange as the odd one,its because of the categorization of the words,all except orange are names of different countries.Similarly the parts of speech are categories used to organize or classify words according to their usage.We use parts of speech as a way to make it easier to talk about language.

Now consider the sentence “A man surreptitiously entered the room”.Even if the word “surreptitiously” is alien to you,if you are familiar with Parts of Speech(POS) you can simply make out that it is an adverb.Similarly when we look into dictionary we can find the POS of the word with its meaning.

The eight PARTS OF SPEECH used to describe English words are

1)Nouns

2)Pronouns

3)Adjectives

4)Verbs

5)Adverbs

6)Prepositions

7)Conjunctions

8)Interjunctions

NOUNS

A noun is often defined as a word which names a person, place or thing.Examples:-boy,girl,India,Gandhiji,Ganga,Thames,movie,Newdelhi.Nouns can be classified into 2 mainly

a) PROPER NOUNS

These are usually names and start with capital letters even in the middle of sentences.Like name of a person,place etc

b)COMMON NOUNS

Can be name of objects(concrete noun),quality,feelings,ideas(abstract nouns),or group names like pride,clan,herd etc(collective nouns).

PRONOUNS

a) Personal Pronouns

I,You,He,She,It,They,We

b) Possessive Pronouns

my,mine,us,our,ours,them,their,your,yours

c) Emphatic Pronouns

myself,ourself,herself,himself

d) Demonstrative Pronouns

this,that,these,those

e) Relative Pronouns

which,who

ADJECTIVES

Adjectives describes a noun or a pronoun.It has different degrees of comparison.

Always use “THE” before a superlative degree.

Eg:- Good teacher, better teacher, best teacher

VERBS

Actions, state of an object.Verbs have VOICE.

ACTIVE VOICE & PASSIVE VOICE.In an active voice subject is the doer of the action.

Verbs can be TRANSITIVE & INTRANSITIVE.

TRANSITIVE verbs has objects.

Eg:-He writes essays.

Whereas INTRANSITIVE verbs don’t have objects

Eg:- Birds fly.

SUBJECT – Is the doer of the action.

OBJECT- Is the receiver.

ADVERBS

An adverb is usually defined as a word that gives more information about a verb, an adjective or another adverb.Adverbs are of different types,

Adverbs

of TIME,tells us WHEN E.g:- always late.

of MANNER E.g:-Smith runs fast.Here fast is the adverb

of FREQUENCY,tells HOW OFTEN

of PLACE,

of REASON.

PREPOSITION

Show relationship between nouns,pronouns.The relationships include direction, place, time, cause, manner and amount.

Eg:- He went to the store.Here “to” gives direction

Other prepositions are by,with,in,on,under,between etc

CONJUNCTION

A conjunction is a word that connects other words or groups of words.Conjunctions are mainly 3 types.

Coordinating conjunctions are conjunctions which connect two equal parts of a sentence.Most common ones are AND,OR,BUT,SO.

Subordinating conjunctions connect two parts of a sentence that are not equal.

ALTHOUGH,INSPITE OF,WHILE,WHEN,IF,SINCE etc are a few examples

Correlative conjunctions are pairs of conjunctions that work together.Common ones are

both..and,either..or,neither..nor,not only..but also etc

INTER JUNCTIONS

These are words that show strong feelings,these are very scarcely used from a grammarian point of view.

E.g:-wow,alas

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