Parts of speech

Introduction

One of the key IELTS skills that all students know is that you need a large vocabulary. But how
do you learn new words? Most importantly, you don’t learn them in isolation. You
learn collocations, which means how words work together. You need to learn how to use a
word or else knowing it is useless. Thus, it is essential that you know the different parts of
speech in order to succeed in IELTS. Through this lecture, I will talk about verbs and nouns,
adverbs and adjectives, and prepositions and conjunctions. These are some of the parts of
speech that make up the English language, and it is important that you know what the words
mean.
The 8 Parts of Speech
In the English language, all words can be broken down into eight categories. They are:
1. nouns
2. verbs
3. adjectives
4. adverbs
5. prepositions
6. conjunctions
7. pronouns
8. interjections
Some people argue that articles (a/an/the) are a separate category called articles or
determiners; however, you can include these as a sort of adjective. In most textbooks, they list
8 parts of speech, so that’s what we will use here to avoid confusion. We will look at these in
more depth after we ask an important question:
Why Learn Parts of Speech for IELTS?
In order to do well in IELTS, you need to have a good knowledge of English. That’s pretty
obvious, right? But how can you know the language well unless you know its basic structure? If
you want to learn new words, you need to know how to use them.
You should know some really basic things like:
1. Adjectives add detail to nouns
2. Adverbs give more information about verbs
3. Pronouns replace nouns.
It is tremendously important that you understand these basics so that you can then develop
more advanced skills. In English, we have a saying: “You need to walk before you can run.”

I often tell my students that they need to master the simple sentence before they can try the
complex sentence. Even when you get to the more advanced grammatical structures, you
should be thinking in terms of parts of speech. Let’s take the IELTS reading exam for an
example. If you are reading a passage about trees and you come to the phrase “deciduous
trees,” how can parts of speech help you? Well, “trees” is, of course, a noun. Clearly,
“deciduous” is giving some information about the tree. Therefore, it is an adjective. We can
then start to work out that “deciduous” must be a kind of tree and look for clues in the text as
to what exactly a deciduous tree is. When we produce English for the speaking and writing
exams, we can take model language and build it up similarly so that the production of language
feels natural. For example, adjectives usually appear before the noun they describe.

Looking at the Parts of Speech

Let’s now take each of the 8 parts of speech in turn and explore its meaning.
1. Noun
Definition: A person, place, idea, or thing
Example: France, a mountain, Steven, sheep, socialism
Sentences: 1. The moon is bright.
2. John is reading that book.

3. Pronoun
Definition: A pronoun replaces a noun. Sometimes this is done to avoid repetition.
Example: he, his, her, I, we
Sentences: 1. They wanted us to go with them.
2.He asked her to the dance but she said no.

4. Adjective
Definition: An adjective describes, changes, or gives extra information about a noun or
pronoun. Example: long, high, red, fast, British, angry
Sentences: 1. The tall man looked at the beautiful woman.
2. The slow car stopped by the big supermarket.
Note: There are different kinds of adjectives:
1. Descriptive (ie. difficult, cheap)
2. Proper (ie. Japanese, Italian)
3. Quantitative (ie. some, many) and so on…

5. Adverb
 Definition: An adverb describes a verb, adjective, or even another adverb. They often end in “-
ly”. Example: quickly, silently, cunningly, amusingly, frankly, eventfully, coyly
Sentences: 1. She quickly ran out to get help.
2. He drove carefully to the village.

6. Verb
Definition: A verb is usually an action, but may also indicate a state of being.
Examples: think, run, dance, sing, believe
Sentences: 1. He studies English so he can go to America.
2. They think they can beat their rivals.

7. Conjunction
Definition: A conjunction joins two words or groups of words, and can connect clauses.
Examples: and, but, or, yet
Sentences: 1. They want to go skiing, but it’s too expensive.
2. She ate ice cream and cake for dessert.

8. Preposition
Definition: Shows the relationship between a noun (or pronoun) and another word.
Examples: on, at, in, from, about
Sentences: 1. The keys are on the table.
2. She sat near the door.
9. Interjection
Definition: A word or phrase that expresses emotion.
Examples: wow, ah, watch out, ouch
Sentences: 1. Ouch! That hurt!
2. Wow! That was amazing!

Building Sentences with Parts of Speech

Of course, the purpose of knowing these parts of speech is to better understand language.
They can help you to decode what a sentence means, but they can also help you to produce
better sentences.
At its most basic, a sentence can sometimes be one word, like an interjection or a verb:

verb interjection
 “Run!” “Hey!”

However, to make a proper sentence requires at least a noun and a verb that express a
complete thought or idea:

noun verb
Frank reads.

We can add verbs or nouns for more specific meaning, or replace the noun with a pronoun to
avoid repetition:

pronoun verb noun

He likes computers.

noun verb verb

Paul was working.

Adverbs and adjectives can alter verbs and nouns to give our language more color

noun verb adjective noun

Peter has nice parents

noun verb noun adverb

Sally plays piano beautifully

Prepositions give us more information about where or when something happens:

 pronoun verb preposition determiner noun adverb
*
She walked to the shop Slowly.

She walked to the shop slowly. (*remember that a determiner or article is another part of
speech, sometimes considered an adjective)

Conjunctions allow us to add multiple clauses into a sentence:

Pron. verb adj. noun conjunctio pron. verb Pron.

n
They like noisy cars but I hate them.

Final Note on Parts of Speech

Keep in mind that some words may be classified as more than one part of speech. For example,
“work” can be both a verb and a noun:
● I went to work yesterday. (noun)
● I was working yesterday. (verb)
Exercises

1. You have to believe in yourself if you ever expect to be successful at

something
2. We left for the mountain just before six in the morning
3. We first went to the store to buy a few things
4. We had a breakfast at a café near the rail station.
5. My friend wasn't strong enough to lift his heavy rucksack.
6. I helped him carry it
7. The weather was very cold.
8. My friend said, "Oh! What cold weather!"
9. We didn't spend the night there.
10. We got back home late at night but we didn't go to sleep
immediately. We were very hungry.
11. I bought a beautiful dress at the mall.
12. What did she ask you to do?
13. I left my shoes under the kitchen table.
14. If we finish our work quickly we can go to the movies.
15. On Saturdays I work from nine to five.
16. I want to go to a university in the United States.
17. I'm sure I've met your girlfriend before.
18. Well, I don't think I'll be home before 6.
19. Andy knocked on the door but nobody answered.
20. After lunch let's go out for a coffee.
Answers

1. Pronoun
2. Verb
3. Preposition
4. Noun
5. Adjective
6. Pronoun
7. Adverb
8. Interjection
9. Adverb
10. Conjunction
11. adjective
12. pronoun
13. preposition
14. adverb
15. verb
16. noun
17. verb
18. interjection
19. conjunction
20. preposition