Various parts of speech

Charles Dube Highway To Success

THE parts of speech under focus are nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives. I believe followers of these pages are not surprised that we talk about these familiar words.

I made it very clear in the past that we will continuously go back to them as English language is made up of these parts of speech.

Remember, these points about these words: a noun is a person, place or thing. There are four kinds of nouns. Proper names (towns, people, months). For example, Jane, Monday, November, Bulawayo). Proper names have capital letters.

Names of other everyday things, for example, hedge, hair, man. Groups of people or things, examples, class, pack, squad and troop. Words for ideas, truth, beauty, fear. (You cannot see, hear or touch them -but they are still nouns).

Verbs are “doing” or being words. “Doing” words riding, ate, thinks, Doing words tell you what is happening in a sentence. Do not always use the same verbs-or the examiner will be bored and will give you bad marks.

Being words -Today was a good day. I am happy. Being words, tell you how something is or was or will be.

Verbs change depending on who they apply to. Examples, I play, she plays. Verbs also have different forms in different tenses. For example, we see, we saw.

Adjectives describe things and people. Global warming is bad. But this is said to be too boring. Global warming is a serious and very worrying issue. This is much better-the adjective helps to impress the examiner.

Adverbs describe how an action is done. The army retaliated, attacking the fortress. This does not make much fun, in “retaliated”and “attacking”- it is just verbs and nouns. But if you say, the army promptly retaliated, viciously attacking the fortress. Adding adverbs makes the sentence more exciting.

Using verbs in sentences-Verbs are pretty important when you are writing, so you need to know how to use them properly . . . Every sentence needs a verb. Verbs are doing words or being words and every sentence needs to have one.

They walk to town every week. “Walk” is the action in this sentence. It is the doing word. Past tense – I was the best athlete at my school two years ago. Future tense: I will be the best athlete in my school in the next two years. I was . . . and “I will”; these are both being words but they are in different tenses.

Make sure you use the right form of the verb. A verb has to match its subject – the person or thing that is doing or being in the sentence. A verb’s subject can be singular (only one person or thing) or plural (more than one person or thing). Make sure you write the correct version of the verb every time.

Do not change verb tenses in your writing by mistake. Include a verb in every sentence you write. To get the top grades, you need to make your sentences interesting to read as well as clear.

How can you do this. Vary the style of your sentences. This will impress the examiner if you use a mixture of sentence types effectively.

There are three main types to choose from. A simple sentence has a subject and one main verb. We played volley ball on the beach. The subject here is “we”, the verb is “played”. A compound sentence usually has two or more parts, each containing a verb.

The parts are linked together by words such as “and” or “but.” For example … He smashed the window and jumped out of the building. The subject, “he”, is shared by both verbs in this sentence. I liked the film, but Mike thought it was awful.

These two verbs have different subjects- “I” in the first part, “Mike” in second part. A complex sentence contains a part that would not make sense on its own. This part is joined to the main sentence by a word like if, as, because or although.

Start your sentence in different ways. Look at this: There was a chill in the air as Princess walked towards the house.

There was nobody around. There was a big mukwa door and Princess knocked on it. Using the same words to start every sentence makes it boring.

Writing interesting sentences that make sense is a good start, but if you are looking for top marks, you need to think about how well your sentences are ordered.

Chronological order makes things easy to follow. Your sentences need to be in the right order – if the examiner cannot follow them easily you will miss out on marks. Chronological order (the order in which things happened) is the most logical order.

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