speech is important part

What is a Part of Speech?

A part of speech is one of the nine types of English words : VERB, NOUN, ADJECTIVE, ADVERB, PRONOUN, PREPOSITION, DETERMINER, CONJUNCTION, INTERJECTION

There are thousands of words but they don't all have the same job. For example:

• some words express action
• other words express things
• other words join one word to another word

And when we want to build a sentence, we use the different types of word .

Each type of word has its own job.

There are 9 basic types of word , and they are called " parts of speech ".

The most important parts of speech are the BIG FOUR, and the verb is the king of these. Here they are, each with an example and its basic "job":

• verb ( deliver - expresses action)
• noun ( computer - expresses a thing)
• adjective ( yellow - tells us more about a noun)
• adverb ( quickly - tells us more about a verb)

The other parts of speech are mostly small words:

• pronoun ( it - replaces a noun)
• preposition ( on - links a noun to another word)
• determiner ( the - limits a noun)
• conjunction ( and - joins words)
• interjection ( ouch ! - expresses feeling)

The 9 Parts of Speech: Definitions and Examples

• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

A part of speech is a term used in traditional grammar for one of the nine main categories into which words are classified according to their functions in sentences , such as nouns or verbs. Also known as word classes , these are the building blocks of grammar.

Parts of Speech

• Word types can be divided into nine parts of speech:
• prepositions
• conjunctions
• articles/determiners
• interjections
• Some words can be considered more than one part of speech, depending on context and usage.
• Interjections can form complete sentences on their own.

Every sentence you write or speak in English includes words that fall into some of the nine parts of speech. These include nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, articles/determiners, and interjections. (Some sources include only eight parts of speech and leave interjections in their own category.)

Learning the names of the parts of speech probably won't make you witty, healthy, wealthy, or wise. In fact, learning just the names of the parts of speech won't even make you a better writer. However, you will gain a basic understanding of sentence structure  and the  English language by familiarizing yourself with these labels.

Open and Closed Word Classes

The parts of speech are commonly divided into  open classes  (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) and  closed classes  (pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles/determiners, and interjections). The idea is that open classes can be altered and added to as language develops and closed classes are pretty much set in stone. For example, new nouns are created every day, but conjunctions never change.

In contemporary linguistics , the label  part of speech has generally been discarded in favor of the term word class or syntactic category . These terms make words easier to qualify objectively based on word construction rather than context. Within word classes, there is the lexical or open class and the function or closed class.

The 9 Parts of Speech

Read about each part of speech below and get started practicing identifying each.

Nouns are a person, place, thing, or idea. They can take on a myriad of roles in a sentence, from the subject of it all to the object of an action. They are capitalized when they're the official name of something or someone, called proper nouns in these cases. Examples: pirate, Caribbean, ship, freedom, Captain Jack Sparrow.

Pronouns stand in for nouns in a sentence. They are more generic versions of nouns that refer only to people. Examples:​  I, you, he, she, it, ours, them, who, which, anybody, ourselves.

Verbs are action words that tell what happens in a sentence. They can also show a sentence subject's state of being ( is , was ). Verbs change form based on tense (present, past) and count distinction (singular or plural). Examples:  sing, dance, believes, seemed, finish, eat, drink, be, became

Adjectives describe nouns and pronouns. They specify which one, how much, what kind, and more. Adjectives allow readers and listeners to use their senses to imagine something more clearly. Examples:  hot, lazy, funny, unique, bright, beautiful, poor, smooth.

Adverbs describe verbs, adjectives, and even other adverbs. They specify when, where, how, and why something happened and to what extent or how often. Examples:  softly, lazily, often, only, hopefully, softly, sometimes.

Preposition

Prepositions  show spacial, temporal, and role relations between a noun or pronoun and the other words in a sentence. They come at the start of a prepositional phrase , which contains a preposition and its object. Examples:  up, over, against, by, for, into, close to, out of, apart from.

Conjunction

Conjunctions join words, phrases, and clauses in a sentence. There are coordinating, subordinating, and correlative conjunctions. Examples:  and, but, or, so, yet, with.

Articles and Determiners

Articles and determiners function like adjectives by modifying nouns, but they are different than adjectives in that they are necessary for a sentence to have proper syntax. Articles and determiners specify and identify nouns, and there are indefinite and definite articles. Examples: articles:  a, an, the ; determiners:  these, that, those, enough, much, few, which, what.

Some traditional grammars have treated articles  as a distinct part of speech. Modern grammars, however, more often include articles in the category of determiners , which identify or quantify a noun. Even though they modify nouns like adjectives, articles are different in that they are essential to the proper syntax of a sentence, just as determiners are necessary to convey the meaning of a sentence, while adjectives are optional.

Interjection

Interjections are expressions that can stand on their own or be contained within sentences. These words and phrases often carry strong emotions and convey reactions. Examples:  ah, whoops, ouch, yabba dabba do!

How to Determine the Part of Speech

Only interjections ( Hooray! ) have a habit of standing alone; every other part of speech must be contained within a sentence and some are even required in sentences (nouns and verbs). Other parts of speech come in many varieties and may appear just about anywhere in a sentence.

To know for sure what part of speech a word falls into, look not only at the word itself but also at its meaning, position, and use in a sentence.

For example, in the first sentence below,  work  functions as a noun; in the second sentence, a verb; and in the third sentence, an adjective:

• The noun  work  is the thing Bosco shows up for.
• The verb  work  is the action he must perform.
• The  attributive noun  [or converted adjective]  work  modifies the noun  permit .

Learning the names and uses of the basic parts of speech is just one way to understand how sentences are constructed.

Dissecting Basic Sentences

To form a basic complete sentence, you only need two elements: a noun (or pronoun standing in for a noun) and a verb. The noun acts as a subject and the verb, by telling what action the subject is taking, acts as the predicate. 

In the short sentence above,  birds  is the noun and  fly  is the verb. The sentence makes sense and gets the point across.

You can have a sentence with just one word without breaking any sentence formation rules. The short sentence below is complete because it's a command to an understood "you".

Here, the pronoun, standing in for a noun, is implied and acts as the subject. The sentence is really saying, "(You) go!"

Constructing More Complex Sentences

Use more parts of speech to add additional information about what's happening in a sentence to make it more complex. Take the first sentence from above, for example, and incorporate more information about how and why birds fly.

• Birds fly when migrating before winter.

Birds and fly remain the noun and the verb, but now there is more description. 

When  is an adverb that modifies the verb fly.  The word before  is a little tricky because it can be either a conjunction, preposition, or adverb depending on the context. In this case, it's a preposition because it's followed by a noun. This preposition begins an adverbial phrase of time ( before winter ) that answers the question of when the birds migrate . Before is not a conjunction because it does not connect two clauses.

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• What Are the Parts of a Prepositional Phrase?
• Parts of Speech Printable Worksheets
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• Lesson Plan: Label Sentences with Parts of Speech
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Parts of Speech

What are the parts of speech, a formal definition.

Table of Contents

The Part of Speech Is Determined by the Word's Function

Are there 8 or 9 parts of speech, the nine parts of speech, (1) adjective, (3) conjunction, (4) determiner, (5) interjection, (7) preposition, (8) pronoun, why the parts of speech are important, video lesson.

• You need to dig a well . (noun)
• You look well . (adjective)
• You dance well . (adverb)
• Well , I agree. (interjection)
• My eyes will well up. (verb)
• red, happy, enormous
• Ask the boy in the red jumper.
• I live in a happy place.
• I caught a fish this morning! I mean an enormous one.
• happily, loosely, often
• They skipped happily to the counter.
• Tie the knot loosely so they can escape.
• I often walk to work.
• It is an intriguingly magic setting.
• He plays the piano extremely well.
• and, or, but
• it is a large and important city.
• Shall we run to the hills or hide in the bushes?
• I know you are lying, but I cannot prove it.
• my, those, two, many
• My dog is fine with those cats.
• There are two dogs but many cats.
• ouch, oops, eek
• Ouch , that hurt.
• Oops , it's broken.
• Eek! A mouse just ran past my foot!
• leader, town, apple
• Take me to your leader .
• I will see you in town later.
• An apple fell on his head .
• in, near, on, with
• Sarah is hiding in the box.
• I live near the train station.
• Put your hands on your head.
• She yelled with enthusiasm.
• she, we, they, that
• Joanne is smart. She is also funny.
• Our team has studied the evidence. We know the truth.
• Jack and Jill went up the hill, but they never returned.
• That is clever!
• work, be, write, exist
• Tony works down the pit now. He was unemployed.
• I will write a song for you.
• I think aliens exist .

Are you a visual learner? Do you prefer video to text? Here is a list of all our grammar videos .

Video for Each Part of Speech

The Most Important Writing Issues

The top issue related to adjectives, the top issue related to adverbs.

• Extremely annoyed, she stared menacingly at her rival.
• Infuriated, she glared at her rival.

The Top Issue Related to Conjunctions

• Burger, Fries, and a shake
• Fish, chips and peas

The Top Issue Related to Determiners

The Top Issue Related to Interjections

The top issue related to nouns, the top issue related to prepositions, the top issue related to pronouns, the top issue related to verbs.

• Crack the parts of speech to help with learning a foreign language or to take your writing to the next level.

This page was written by Craig Shrives .

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12 Structure and Format: Outlining the Speech

Rebecca Collier, M.B.A.

Learning Objectives

• Determine the general and specific purpose of a presentation.
• Create a captivating speech introduction, body and conclusion.
• Support ideas and arguments through cited research.
• Differentiate between preparation outlines and presentation notes.

Just like a building has structure and an overall plan to guide people through the space in a logical way, you will need an outline for your speech to provide a framework for your ideas and to help your audience see how these ideas connect to create your overall message. Additionally, similar to the way people have expectations for what they will experience when walking into a building, your audience will have some expectations about how your speech will unfold. When these expectations are not met, such as the example earlier, when you entered the door expecting to see the receptionist and were instead met with a toilet, your audience may find it jarring or uncomfortable if your speech does not have a recognizable introduction or conclusion, or if you abruptly jump from subtopic to subtopic without notice. In this chapter, we’ll look at how to create an outline to guide your audience through your points in an organized format for a well-structured speech. In a professional setting, most speakers outline their speeches far enough in advance of their presentation date so that they have time to practice their performance and become comfortable with the material. Creating an outline will help you feel confident during your speech, because you took the time to carefully plan out what you desired to say. This leaves you free to focus on your delivery – how you say it – during your speech. This chapter will walk you through all the different parts of a speech outline, and show you how a formal outline can be translated into less cumbersome speaking notes.

The Speech Topic

One of the hardest parts of the speech assignment for students is choosing a topic with which to work with. Oftentimes, as soon as you begin drafting an outline for a chosen topic, other topics will start to look more and more appealing, and you will want to change to a new topic. Resist this impulse, if you can! Many speech students have lost points on late assignments because they kept changing their mind about what to speak about. Once you begin working with a topic (approved by your instructor, when applicable), commit to it. Your instructor can help you navigate through the challenges of a topic with which that you are struggling with. Remember, your research and your speech delivery can make almost any topic engaging for the audience.

The Speech Purpose

Before you begin preparing your speech, your instructor will let you know what kind of speech you are working on. Is it a speech intended to inform your audience? Is it a speech where you will be persuading the audience? Or, is the speech designed for entertainment purposes? You will need to know what kind of speech you are giving before you do any other work on this assignment. To make sure that you are aware of the overall goal of the speech, your instructor may ask you to include the general purpose on your outline. There are three basic general purposes that apply to speech presentations: To inform, to persuade, and to entertain. An informative speech requires you to give a neutral, unbiased perspective to the audience, while a persuasive speech attempts to change an audience’s beliefs, feelings, or actions. An entertainment speech is used to celebrate or commemorate something or as part of a ceremony.

In addition to the general purpose, each speech will also have a corresponding specific purpose. The specific purpose identifies what you would like to leave the audience with after your speech. For example, a specific purpose for an i nformative speech about the pyramids of Giza, Egypt might read:  To inform my audience about when and how the pyramids of Giza were built and what they look like today . A specific purpose for a persuasive speech about organ donation might read:  To persuade my audience to register as organ donors.

Some professors might prefer that you submit a purpose statement in lieu of a specific purpose. The purpose statement identifies your goal for the audience. Using the example informative speech topic above on the pyramids of Giza, Egypt, your purpose statement might read:  At the end of my speech, my audience will know when and how the pyramids of Giza were built and what they look like today.   The organ donation speech might have the following purpose statement:  At the end of my speech, my audience members will register as organ donors .

The Central Idea

Once you know your topic and your purpose, it’s time to brainstorm the key message of your speech. This message is known as the central idea, and it serves as a thesis for your presentation. Your instructor may ask you to include a central idea on your outline. Creating a central idea is good practice, because it shows that you can state the main ideas of the speech in one sentence. A central idea elaborates on the speech purpose. For a persuasive speech, the central idea includes what we’re persuading the audience about, and why our viewpoint is correct. For example:

Everyone should register as an organ donor because it’s easy to do, and it could save or drastically improve someone’s life at no cost to the donor. 

For an informative speech, the central idea is a summary thesis, and it gives the main ideas of the speech in one strong statement. For example:

The pyramids of Giza, Egypt, were built by hand over six thousand years ago, and their outer structures and inner chambers are mostly intact today.

A strong central idea should have the following characteristics:

• It should be a complete sentence.
• It can’t be a question.
• It should encapsulate each main idea.

The Speech Introduction

Although your instructor may ask you to include the topic, general purpose, specific purpose, and central idea on your speech outline, you actually won’t share these with your audience as part of your speech. Instead, your presentation to the class should begin with your introduction. The introduction and the conclusion are the most important parts of your speech, because they are the parts that your audience is most likely to remember. Thus, the structure and development of these two parts is crucial to the success of your speech. Your speech introduction should include the following five parts:

• Attention-getter

Introduce yourself and your topic

Relate the topic to your audience

• Statement of credibility/interest
• Summary of your main ideas. 

Attention-Getter

The first–and most important–thing you can do in a speech introduction is to captivate your audience and interest them in your speech topic. It is much easier to keep someone’s attention than to fight to regain it, so the attention-getter is the first part of your speech that your audience will hear.

There are lots of ways you can help your topic appeal to your listeners. One classic example is to tell a short story. This can either be a personal story, or you can recount a story you heard or read somewhere that leads into your topic. A story can help personalize your topic for the audience and bring in a human connection.

Another way to draw attention to your topic is to startle your audience with a shocking statistic or example that they won’t be expecting. Be careful with this technique. If the audience is already familiar with your “shocking” material, your attention-getter could backfire, and you may end up losing the attention of your audience instead of gaining it.

Many students like to begin their speeches by asking a series of rhetorical questions. This requires the audience to think about the speech topic and make personal applications. If you start your speech in this way, make sure that you ask a few questions. One is rarely enough to generate interest in the topic. Also, the questions should make the audience ponder something. Suppose I began my speech with, “How many of you like lemons? Well, today I’m going to inform you about Miracle Berries.” Did that get your attention? Not likely. Are you excited to hear more about my topic? It’s doubtful. Let’s try that again. “By show of hands, who here likes drinking lemonade? Okay, now who likes having a slice or two of lemons in their drinking water? Now, how many of you would enjoy snacking on slices of lemon – no sugar added? Well, what if I told you there was a way to make lemons taste intensely sweet, without adding any sugar? Today, I’m going to tell you about Miracle Berries…” When using questions as an attention getter, you might consider incorporating a silent survey. This is where you have your audience answer your questions in a physical way, such as by raising a hand. If students answer your questions vocally, the attention-getter will likely go on for far too long. A silent survey keeps the entire audience involved, without letting the audience take over your speech.

Additionally, you could begin with a powerful quote that ties into your topic. Make sure that you tell the audience where the quote comes from. If the source of the quote is someone that your audience is not likely to be familiar with, you may need to contextualize the source and explain why the words of this person are relevant. For example, if I began my speech with this quote, “Taxes are the price we pay for civilized society,” as said by Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior. Who is this person? Nobody knows, so nobody cares. I should contextualize this source, by saying something like, “According to US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior…“ Now my audience will understand why the person who spoke these words is relevant.

You might also try to get the audience’s attention by making them curious about your topic. Give them some clues, and see if they can guess what your topic will be from these clues. Be sure to take a moment and celebrate with them when they finally guess correctly!

Finally, you can begin your speech with some audience participation . Just make sure this is carefully planned and not too complicated. You don’t want the attention-getter to take up all the allotted time for your speech. One student began her informative presentation by having everyone write down five numbers, between zero and nine, in any order, with no repeats. She then held a mini lottery for the class by randomly drawing numbers from a hat and giving a small prize to the student who’s written-down numbers were the closest to the drawn ones. This was an exciting way to begin a speech on the New York State lottery.

The attention-getter of the speech is arguably the most important part of the presentation. If you don’t capture the audience’s attention, they are less likely to take in the rest of your speech. Thus, it is worthwhile to spend some time developing an engaging attention-getter that you are comfortable delivering.

Now that your audience is focused and interested in what you have to say, you should share with them who you are, and what you will be speaking to them about. This is especially important if you have used a detailed or complex attention-getter, where it may be necessary to clarify your actual topic for the audience.

Statement of Credibility/Interest

Once you have piqued the interest of your audience, and they know who you are and what you’ll be speaking about, it’s time to gain their trust. What makes you a credible speaker on this topic? Share with the audience why you chose this particular subject, and any personal experience you have with it. For example, if I were giving an informative speech on lacrosse: “I was first exposed to lacrosse in middle school, and I went on to play the sport for all four years of high school. Our team was very successful, and we won several championships.”

However, you might give a speech on a topic with which you have had no direct experience. Never fear! You can also tell the audience about the kinds of research you have done to prepare yourself to speak on this subject. For example: “Although I’ve never actually played lacrosse, I’ve always been curious about it. I began preparing for this speech by watching videos online to understand how the sport is played, and I found some great articles to help me understand its history and development.”

Sharing your interest in this topic, along with your experience with it, or an explanation of your research process will show the audience that you are a credible speaker on this topic and someone worth listening to.

The next step is to help the audience see how they can relate to the topic you have chosen. Be creative! This can be a challenging step, and it requires some critical thinking. Suppose you are giving a speech where you are persuading your audience that college students shouldn’t have to buy textbooks for their classes. Well, this is an easy one, because almost everyone in your audience will be a college student, and most people like to save money. Now, imagine that you are giving a speech to inform your audience about conjoined twins. It is unlikely that you will have many pairs of conjoined twins in your audience, so how can you make this topic relatable? You might start with the idea that many audience members may want to have children (or more children) someday, or they may know people who plan to have children. It’s important to be informed about a condition that could affect these future children. Also, you could take the angle that we live in a complex world, and we have to deal with lots of different kinds of people. Understanding more about the conditions of people different from ourselves can help us develop empathy. Almost any topic can relate to your audience, but some will take more work than others.

Preview your main ideas

For the final part of the speech introduction, you’ll give your audience a summary of what you’ll specifically be talking about in this speech. This is different from introducing yourself and your topic. There, you might tell the audience that you’ll be informing them about the axolotl. In the preview, you’ll let them know that this speech will describe the physical appearance of the axolotl, where it lives, and how it regenerates different parts of its body. The preview is given at the end of the introduction to help the audience pace the speech. For the example above, when you come to the part about the axolotl regenerating, the audience will know that the speech is almost done. It also helps your audience to know what they should be focusing on during your speech, and what the takeaway will be.

The speech introduction is the foundation of your presentation, and it’s important to ensure that this foundation is sturdy. If the foundation of a building is unstable, the building may crumble and fall apart. Similarly, the speech introduction prepares the audience for the body of the speech. If the introduction is underdeveloped, the rest of the speech will be weakened by association. It is worth taking some extra time to make sure your speech introduction covers each of the five steps.

Transitioning from Point to Point

Suppose you were driving a car down the highway, and the driver in front of you kept switching lanes abruptly without using a turn signal. Wouldn’t that be frustrating? Well, when a speaker doesn’t use transitions, it creates a similarly jarring experience for the audience. Using a transition phrase prepares the audience for a new topic and helps your speech flow logically from point to point. Transitions in a speech are a little bit different from transitions used in written work. When you are writing an essay, you can use a word such as “also” or “however” to move on to your next point. Yet, in a speech, you need to be more specific. The audience needs a clear signal that you are about to begin a new point. In order to transition to your first main point, you might say: “Let’s begin by,” “I’d like to start with,” “First of all, ” “To commence,” etc. For additional main ideas, you could transition with “Moving on,” “My next point will be,” “Now that we’ve looked at__________, I’ll tell you about ________,” etc. Transitions are especially helpful in separating out your main ideas for your audience so that the body of the speech has distinct sections.

The Main Ideas

The main ideas are the major subtopics of your speech. Once you know your speech topic, the next step is to decide on your main ideas. You can’t create a central idea or a speech introduction without them. The main ideas are the topic sentences of your speech. As a general rule, you should have at least two main ideas. If you only have one main idea, your speech has nowhere to go, and it may feel repetitive for the audience. That being said, you generally shouldn’t have more than five main ideas in your speech. Once you get past the fifth main idea, the audience may have trouble remembering the first one! It’s often a good idea to plan on having three main ideas for your speech. Think about how often the number three comes up in life: three strikes in baseball, three wishes, first/, second/, and third place, etc. In writing, this is known as the “Rule of Three.” How many bears does Goldilocks encounter? How many musketeers are there? People are used to hearing things come up in sets of three, and so having three main points may make it easier for your audience to remember them. In the end, though, you will need to decide on the appropriate number of points you need to develop your speech topic for your audience.

The Supporting Material

After you have your Main Ideas planned out, it’s time to start researching material to support these points. For each point, you’ll need some things to talk about. Depending on how you have chosen to organize your speech, you may need to look up some facts to share. This includes definitions, descriptions, and explanations. If you have too many facts, your speech may come across as dry and lacking in depth. Facts are generally used to lay the foundation for your main idea, and you will use other supporting materials to illustrate your point or defend your argument.

As you continue to research your topic, you should look for examples to share. Examples help your audience to understand and relate to your main idea. If I was giving an informative speech on the solar eclipses, I might share a brief example with my audience: “On Monday, August 17th, 2017, a rare, full solar eclipse of the sun crossed the North American continent.” A brief example takes an abstract idea from your speech and quickly translates it into a real-life situation. This can help make your topic clearer for your audience.

In that same speech on solar eclipses, you could also use an extended example. In this situation, you would fill in all the details to create a story for your audience. “It was a day to be remembered. Hotels across North America had been booked over a year in advance, and millions of people traveled to find a spot in the path of totality – the area, about 70 miles wide, that would experience a total eclipse of the sun. As the time of the eclipse drew near, the air felt noticeably colder, and there were strange shadows on the ground. Then, for a little over a minute in most cities, the sky was plunged into darkness and the beautiful, white corona of the sun could be seen, along with a few stars. People gasped and screamed with delight. It was over all too soon, but those who witnessed this event would never forget it.” Extended examples add a personal touch to your speech and can help ensure that you have enough content to reach the timing parameters of your assignment.

Additionally, you may decide to use a hypothetical example. When used in a speech, a hypothetical example puts the audience into your speech. “What if you…” “Suppose you…” “Imagine that you…” These types of examples work well as attention-getters in the introduction, and you can use them throughout your speech to grab the attention of your audience and refocus them on your topic. As the audience members think about how they would respond to the imagined scenario, they are directly engaging with your speech concepts.

If you are looking to build credibility with your audience on your main idea, you should include testimonies as part of your supporting material. In the court of law, a person who has experience with the subject of the trial is called upon to give their opinion or relate their direct experience. This is similar to how testimonies are used in a speech, where you will include quotes from people who are experienced with your topic. These quotes fall into two categories: expert and peer. An expert testimony comes from someone who has professional experience with the topic, or some other publicly recognized form of expertise. A peer testimony is someone who has personal experience with your topic, but this experience is not from a professional or academic standpoint. Now, which is better for your speech, expert or peer testimonies? It depends. People tend to trust an expert testimony about scientific and medical points; however, people relate to a peer testimony more when the speech point has to do with everyday life. Sometimes an expert testimony can feel out of touch with how the average person lives.

Another way to come across as a credible speaker on your topic is to include statistics in your speech. Any numerical data in your speech, except, perhaps, a date or time, would be considered a statistic. When people hear numbers, they are more likely to believe that what you are telling them is backed up by research. However, you need to make sure you are using statistics appropriately. Here are some guidelines to follow when using this type of supporting material:

• Cite : if you use a statistic in your speech, you need to tell us where that number came from. Otherwise, we’ll think you made it up!
• Sparingly : Don’t use too many statistics in your speech! Remember, statistics are like spices. If you use the right ones, they will bring out the flavors of your meal, but if you use too many, they will overwhelm your meal.
• Round : It can be difficult to process complex numbers unless we see them written out. While it’s fine to read that “New York City covers 300.36 miles,” in a speech, it’s better to say that “New York City has just over 300 miles.” It’s okay to be a little less accurate, if it helps you to be understood. Words like, “approximately,” “close to,” “almost,” “nearly,” etc. will come in handy here.
• Explain : Help your audience to understand the numbers you are using. For example: “How much is a billion dollars? You could spend $100,000 a day for 25 years before you’d run out of cash.” During your speech, help us grasp complicated numbers in terms we can relate to.

No matter what materials you decide to use in your speech to support your main ideas, you’ll want to include citations in your outline to show where you found this information. Unlike writing, which has several formal citation styles, there is no specific way to cite your sources in your speech body. Your professor may require you to use a particular writing citation style (APA, MLA, Chicago, Associated Press). If not, note that speech citations should include at least the source where you found the information and the date the information was published. You may also include the author of the information, but you may need to contextualize this for us. For example, if I said during my speech, “According to Bob Smith…,” who is Bob Smith? No one knows, and no one cares. However, if I said, “According to the financial journalist Bob Smith, in an article published by the New York Times last month…,” people may care more about Bob’s point of view. The date is important here because the recency of your information can affect its relevance. Unlike citation in a paper, you don’t need to cite your source every time you use information from it. This would become tedious for the audience to listen to. Instead, you should add your citation at the beginning or end of when you are sharing information from that source. For example: “All of the statistics I’ve shared today come from the Red Cross website, updated in 2019.” Or, “The examples you’ll be hearing in my speech all come from the Mermaid documentary published on Animal Planet in 2011.” These oral citations give your audience enough information about your source to be able to find the full reference on your outline, if they need to verify something.

The Speech Conclusion

Once you have finished taking your audience on a journey through the main ideas of your speech, it’s time to draw things to a close. However, you need to give your audience a hint that the end is coming. We call this a signal . If you forget to signal the end of your speech, you may finish speaking and find that your audience does not break into applause. They didn’t realize you were on your way to the finish line. Giving your audience a signal alerts them that your speech will be over soon and helps them emotionally prepare for the end of your speech. The signal can be given a specific phrase, such as, “I’d like to end by…” or, “to wrap things up.” Pay attention, and you may notice that your college professors will often use a verbal signal near the end of the class session, such as, “and last of all…” or “before we go…” Try using a signal phrase in your next presentation, and see if you can spot your audience visibly perking up when they hear it. More advanced signals can also signal the end of the speech by changing the rate, pitch, or volume of their remarks. However, if you are using this technique, be sure to practice in front of someone before your actual presentation in class. You may think that you’re effecting a great change in the way you are speaking, but those changes might need to be exaggerated to be noticeable by your audience. The only way you’ll know for sure is to get some live feedback.

The signal of the conclusion leads into a brief summary of your main ideas. Simply restate an overview of the main ideas you just covered to help your audience retain the message of your speech. You may notice that your professors will also do this near the end of a class session. “Today we have covered…” is a common way for this to begin.

You’ll want to cap off your conclusion with a strong statement . It’s a good idea to actually plan out, word for word, what you would like to say for the last line of your speech. The audience is most likely to remember the first thing you said, and the last thing you said, so these words are the most important part of your speech. As much as you are able, commit them to memory. This will help you to make eye contact with your audience as you speak to help the words land with maximum effect. A strong statement can be a quote, or it can refer back to something you said in your introduction. In a persuasive speech, this statement will usually contain a call to action, or it will reinforce what you want your audience to believe, feel or do after hearing your presentation. For an informative speech, the strong statement should reinforce the importance of knowing about your topic, or what makes it so interesting.

It may be useful to think of the Three S’s of the speech conclusion as you work on this part of your presentation. Using a signal, summary, and strong statement will provide closure for the audience and help them to remember the ideas that you shared.

Creating a List of References

The last piece of your outline will generally be a list of references that you have used to provide source material for your speech. There should be at least one citation in the body of your speech from each reference. A reference is not just a website link to your research, but it shares details about your source in an organized format. You will generally need to provide the author’s name and the title of the piece, along with the name of the source you got this information from, and the date it was published. If you found the source online, you will also include the URL for the web page where this source can be found. There are standardized ways to organize all this information, and your professor may ask you to use a specific format. The two most common styles for formatting references are MLA and APA. You can find many resources, both online, and in your college’s library, to help you apply the correct formatting of the style your professor has requested. Carefully following these guidelines will add a professional polish to your speech outline and help you develop attention to detail in your written work, which is a valuable skill in the workforce, and in daily life.

Practicing with the Outline

As you are preparing to present your speech, it may be helpful to highlight key words and phrases so that you can quickly find the information you need in a single glance. This way you can have consistent eye contact with your audience. You want to avoid bobbing your head up and down as you speak, alternating between reading and seeing your audience. Remember, the outline is merely there to keep you on track. You don’t have to say all the words exactly as you have written them. In fact, your words will have much greater impact with the audience if you can create the impression that you are speaking spontaneously. Don’t be afraid to check in with your outline to make sure you have included all your ideas, and in the correct order, but also don’t rely so much on the outline that you are not connected to the audience.

If your instructor has asked you to include a speech topic, general purpose, specific purpose, purpose statement, and/or central idea on your outline, do not include these as part of your speech presentation. They belong on the outline to show your professor that you understood the topic and the goals for the assignment, and that you had a clear thesis for the speech, but you don’t share these out loud with your audience. Likewise, you also won’t read off the references to the audience at the end. These are part of the written assignment, but your oral citations are sufficient to establish your credibility in your presentation. For each speech assignment, you’ll begin with the introduction and finish up with the conclusion.

To help you prepare for your in-class presentation, you should plan on practicing your speech out loud, with a timer, in front of at least one other person. The first time you run through your speech in this way, you’ll find out what you’ve got, and you will likely need to make some adjustments to your outline. You can also get some feedback on your speech delivery, so that you can begin to refine your presentation skills. Continue this process of making changes and then practicing again in front of someone. In general, by the fifth time you’ve gone through the speech, you have it loosely committed to memory. You will know the overall flow of your topics and supporting material, and you can focus on connecting with your audience.

Remember the example of the disjointed building at the beginning of this chapter? The building had important rooms, but it was very difficult to navigate between them and make use of them. This concept also applies to your speech. You might find interesting examples and compelling arguments, but if they are not organized well, your audience may miss them. A well-organized speech will help your audience process and remember your message and will give you greater confidence as a speaker. Spending a little extra time polishing your outline will pay off in dividends towards a speech performance that you can be proud of.

Review Questions

• Why is it important to create an outline for a presentation?
• What are the three general purposes of a speech presentation?
• What is the difference between a specific purpose, or purpose statement, and a central idea?
• What are the five parts of a speech introduction?
• How do speech transitions help the audience?
• Which type of example generally works well as an attention-getter for a speech?
• Why should we use statistics sparingly in our presentations?
• When would a peer testimony be more credible with the audience than an expert testimony?
• How does oral citation differ from the type of citation you would include in an essay?
• What could you say to signal the end of your speech?
• What might be included on your outline that would not be spoken out loud as part of your speech?

Class Activities

• Read aloud a series of specific purposes or purpose statements, and have the students classify the speech categories as “Informative,” “Persuasive,” or “Special Occasion.”
• Write down different types of attention-getters on small pieces of paper, such as “Story,” “Startle,” “Rhetorical Questions,” “Quote,” “Make the audience curious,” “Audience Participation,” etc. Break the students into small groups, and have each group blindly choose an attention-getter from the pile. Then, give the entire class a topic, such as “chewing gum.” Each group has to come up with an attention-getter for this topic in the category they selected.
• Have the students help you come up with a list of 10-14 totally random, but specific, people, places, or things. Help them out with a few – mustaches, the Black Widow spider, North Dakota, etc. Once you have a list, pair the students up and have them share how they would have credibility on this topic. Do they have personal experience with it? Will they need to do research?
• Keeping the same list above, have the students work with their partner to decide how they would relate this topic to their diverse classroom audience.
• Create an abbreviated preparation outline for the students that includes the general purpose, specific purpose, central Idea, and a list of main points. Break the students into groups and give each group either the introduction or a main point. The groups will prepare 1-2 minutes of content for their section and elect a spokesperson to present this to the class. Once the students are prepared, start a timer and do the presentation. The instruction should provide transitions between main ideas, as well as the conclusion.
• Have the students look up a quote from their favorite celebrity. It has to come from an article, though, and not a “Quotes” website. Put them into groups to share, and let each group pick the best one to present to the class. The elected spokesperson for that group will need to complete this oral citation phrase: “According to_______, reported by________(website or periodical) on _______(date)…” and then relay the quote.
• Assemble Make 5-10 enlarged copies of both an APA reference and an MLA references. Cut the copies up so that the author, article title, published date, Retrieval URL, etc., are all on different parts. Divide the class into groups and give each group an APA “puzzle” to assemble. The first group to correctly assemble their reference wins! Repeat with the MLA reference.
• Pass out a lined index card to each student. Give the students an easy topic, and have them free write in complete sentences on this topic until either the time is up or the card is filled. Next, have the students choose 10 key words that will help them remember what they wrote, and list those words on the blank side of the card. Then, pair the students up. Decide on a “Person A” and a “Person B.” “Person A” begins, and flips the card so that he or she can see only the key words, and the partner can see the freewriting. Have “Person A” attempt to share what he or she wrote with “Person B,” using only the key words as a prompt. At the end, “Person B” will let him or her know if anything was left out. Finally, switch roles, so that the other partner can present. Have a discussion with the class about the difference between presentation notes and preparation outlines.

Works Cited

Gallo, Carmine. Talk Like TED . New York, NY: Macmillan. 2014. Print.

Hemmert, Nancy Grass. Public Speaking in American English: A Guide for Non-Native Speakers . 1st  edition. New York, NY: Pearson. 2007. Print.

Lucas, Stephen. E. The Art of Public Speaking . 12th edition. New York, NY: McGraw Hill. 2014. Print.

Powell, Susanna, et al. Stand and Deliver: High Impact Presentations . 4th edition.  New York, NY: Pearson. 2014 Print.

Structure and Format: Outlining the Speech Copyright © by Rebecca Collier, M.B.A. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, understanding the 8 parts of speech: definitions and examples.

General Education

If you’re trying to learn the grammatical rules of English, you’ve probably been asked to learn the parts of speech. But what are parts of speech and how many are there? How do you know which words are classified in each part of speech?

The answers to these questions can be a bit complicated—English is a difficult language to learn and understand. Don’t fret, though! We’re going to answer each of these questions for you with a full guide to the parts of speech that explains the following:

• What the parts of speech are, including a comprehensive parts of speech list
• Parts of speech definitions for the individual parts of speech. (If you’re looking for information on a specific part of speech, you can search for it by pressing Command + F, then typing in the part of speech you’re interested in.) 
• Parts of speech examples
• A ten question quiz covering parts of speech definitions and parts of speech examples

We’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s begin!

Feature Image: (Gavina S / Wikimedia Commons)

What Are Parts of Speech? 

The parts of speech definitions in English can vary, but here’s a widely accepted one: a part of speech is a category of words that serve a similar grammatical purpose in sentences.  

To make that definition even simpler, a part of speech is just a category for similar types of words . All of the types of words included under a single part of speech function in similar ways when they’re used properly in sentences.

In the English language, it’s commonly accepted that there are 8 parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions, interjections, and prepositions. Each of these categories plays a different role in communicating meaning in the English language. Each of the eight parts of speech—which we might also call the “main classes” of speech—also have subclasses. In other words, we can think of each of the eight parts of speech as being general categories for different types within their part of speech . There are different types of nouns, different types of verbs, different types of adjectives, adverbs, pronouns...you get the idea. 

And that’s an overview of what a part of speech is! Next, we’ll explain each of the 8 parts of speech—definitions and examples included for each category. 

There are tons of nouns in this picture. Can you find them all? 

Nouns are a class of words that refer, generally, to people and living creatures, objects, events, ideas, states of being, places, and actions. You’ve probably heard English nouns referred to as “persons, places, or things.” That definition is a little simplistic, though—while nouns do include people, places, and things, “things” is kind of a vague term. I t’s important to recognize that “things” can include physical things—like objects or belongings—and nonphysical, abstract things—like ideas, states of existence, and actions. 

Since there are many different types of nouns, we’ll include several examples of nouns used in a sentence while we break down the subclasses of nouns next!

Subclasses of Nouns, Including Examples

As an open class of words, the category of “nouns” has a lot of subclasses. The most common and important subclasses of nouns are common nouns, proper nouns, concrete nouns, abstract nouns, collective nouns, and count and mass nouns. Let’s break down each of these subclasses!

Common Nouns and Proper Nouns

Common nouns are generic nouns—they don’t name specific items. They refer to people (the man, the woman), living creatures (cat, bird), objects (pen, computer, car), events (party, work), ideas (culture, freedom), states of being (beauty, integrity), and places (home, neighborhood, country) in a general way. 

Proper nouns are sort of the counterpart to common nouns. Proper nouns refer to specific people, places, events, or ideas. Names are the most obvious example of proper nouns, like in these two examples: 

Common noun: What state are you from?

Proper noun: I’m from Arizona .

Whereas “state” is a common noun, Arizona is a proper noun since it refers to a specific state. Whereas “the election” is a common noun, “Election Day” is a proper noun. Another way to pick out proper nouns: the first letter is often capitalized. If you’d capitalize the word in a sentence, it’s almost always a proper noun. 

Concrete Nouns and Abstract Nouns

Concrete nouns are nouns that can be identified through the five senses. Concrete nouns include people, living creatures, objects, and places, since these things can be sensed in the physical world. In contrast to concrete nouns, abstract nouns are nouns that identify ideas, qualities, concepts, experiences, or states of being. Abstract nouns cannot be detected by the five senses. Here’s an example of concrete and abstract nouns used in a sentence: 

Concrete noun: Could you please fix the weedeater and mow the lawn ?

Abstract noun: Aliyah was delighted to have the freedom to enjoy the art show in peace .

See the difference? A weedeater and the lawn are physical objects or things, and freedom and peace are not physical objects, though they’re “things” people experience! Despite those differences, they all count as nouns. 

Collective Nouns, Count Nouns, and Mass Nouns

Nouns are often categorized based on number and amount. Collective nouns are nouns that refer to a group of something—often groups of people or a type of animal. Team , crowd , and herd are all examples of collective nouns. 

Count nouns are nouns that can appear in the singular or plural form, can be modified by numbers, and can be described by quantifying determiners (e.g. many, most, more, several). For example, “bug” is a count noun. It can occur in singular form if you say, “There is a bug in the kitchen,” but it can also occur in the plural form if you say, “There are many bugs in the kitchen.” (In the case of the latter, you’d call an exterminator...which is an example of a common noun!) Any noun that can accurately occur in one of these singular or plural forms is a count noun. 

Mass nouns are another type of noun that involve numbers and amount. Mass nouns are nouns that usually can’t be pluralized, counted, or quantified and still make sense grammatically. “Charisma” is an example of a mass noun (and an abstract noun!). For example, you could say, “They’ve got charisma, ” which doesn’t imply a specific amount. You couldn’t say, “They’ve got six charismas, ” or, “They’ve got several charismas .” It just doesn’t make sense! 

Verbs are all about action...just like these runners. 

A verb is a part of speech that, when used in a sentence, communicates an action, an occurrence, or a state of being . In sentences, verbs are the most important part of the predicate, which explains or describes what the subject of the sentence is doing or how they are being. And, guess what? All sentences contain verbs!

There are many words in the English language that are classified as verbs. A few common verbs include the words run, sing, cook, talk, and clean. These words are all verbs because they communicate an action performed by a living being. We’ll look at more specific examples of verbs as we discuss the subclasses of verbs next!

Subclasses of Verbs, Including Examples

Like nouns, verbs have several subclasses. The subclasses of verbs include copular or linking verbs, intransitive verbs, transitive verbs, and ditransitive or double transitive verbs. Let’s dive into these subclasses of verbs!

Copular or Linking Verbs

Copular verbs, or linking verbs, are verbs that link a subject with its complement in a sentence. The most familiar linking verb is probably be. Here’s a list of other common copular verbs in English: act, be, become, feel, grow, seem, smell, and taste. 

So how do copular verbs work? Well, in a sentence, if we said, “Michi is ,” and left it at that, it wouldn’t make any sense. “Michi,” the subject, needs to be connected to a complement by the copular verb “is.” Instead, we could say, “Michi is leaving.” In that instance, is links the subject of the sentence to its complement. 

Transitive Verbs, Intransitive Verbs, and Ditransitive Verbs

Transitive verbs are verbs that affect or act upon an object. When unattached to an object in a sentence, a transitive verb does not make sense. Here’s an example of a transitive verb attached to (and appearing before) an object in a sentence: 

Please take the clothes to the dry cleaners.

In this example, “take” is a transitive verb because it requires an object—”the clothes”—to make sense. “The clothes” are the objects being taken. “Please take” wouldn’t make sense by itself, would it? That’s because the transitive verb “take,” like all transitive verbs, transfers its action onto another being or object. 

Conversely, intransitive verbs don’t require an object to act upon in order to make sense in a sentence. These verbs make sense all on their own! For instance, “They ran ,” “We arrived ,” and, “The car stopped ” are all examples of sentences that contain intransitive verbs. 

Finally, ditransitive verbs, or double transitive verbs, are a bit more complicated. Ditransitive verbs are verbs that are followed by two objects in a sentence . One of the objects has the action of the ditransitive verb done to it, and the other object has the action of the ditransitive verb directed towards it. Here’s an example of what that means in a sentence: 

I cooked Nathan a meal.

In this example, “cooked” is a ditransitive verb because it modifies two objects: Nathan and meal . The meal has the action of “cooked” done to it, and “Nathan” has the action of the verb directed towards him. 

Adjectives are descriptors that help us better understand a sentence. A common adjective type is color.

#3: Adjectives

Here’s the simplest definition of adjectives: adjectives are words that describe other words . Specifically, adjectives modify nouns and noun phrases. In sentences, adjectives appear before nouns and pronouns (they have to appear before the words they describe!). 

Adjectives give more detail to nouns and pronouns by describing how a noun looks, smells, tastes, sounds, or feels, or its state of being or existence. . For example, you could say, “The girl rode her bike.” That sentence doesn’t have any adjectives in it, but you could add an adjective before both of the nouns in the sentence—”girl” and “bike”—to give more detail to the sentence. It might read like this: “The young girl rode her red bike.”   You can pick out adjectives in a sentence by asking the following questions: 

• Which one? 
• What kind? 
• How many? 
• Whose’s? 

We’ll look at more examples of adjectives as we explore the subclasses of adjectives next!

Subclasses of Adjectives, Including Examples

Subclasses of adjectives include adjective phrases, comparative adjectives, superlative adjectives, and determiners (which include articles, possessive adjectives, and demonstratives). 

Adjective Phrases

An adjective phrase is a group of words that describe a noun or noun phrase in a sentence. Adjective phrases can appear before the noun or noun phrase in a sentence, like in this example: 

The extremely fragile vase somehow did not break during the move.

In this case, extremely fragile describes the vase. On the other hand, adjective phrases can appear after the noun or noun phrase in a sentence as well: 

The museum was somewhat boring. 

Again, the phrase somewhat boring describes the museum. The takeaway is this: adjective phrases describe the subject of a sentence with greater detail than an individual adjective. 

Comparative Adjectives and Superlative Adjectives

Comparative adjectives are used in sentences where two nouns are compared. They function to compare the differences between the two nouns that they modify. In sentences, comparative adjectives often appear in this pattern and typically end with -er. If we were to describe how comparative adjectives function as a formula, it might look something like this: 

Noun (subject) + verb + comparative adjective + than + noun (object).

Here’s an example of how a comparative adjective would work in that type of sentence: 

The horse was faster than the dog.

The adjective faster compares the speed of the horse to the speed of the dog. Other common comparative adjectives include words that compare distance ( higher, lower, farther ), age ( younger, older ), size and dimensions ( bigger, smaller, wider, taller, shorter ), and quality or feeling ( better, cleaner, happier, angrier ). 

Superlative adjectives are adjectives that describe the extremes of a quality that applies to a subject being compared to a group of objects . Put more simply, superlative adjectives help show how extreme something is. In sentences, superlative adjectives usually appear in this structure and end in -est : 

Noun (subject) + verb + the + superlative adjective + noun (object).

Here’s an example of a superlative adjective that appears in that type of sentence: 

Their story was the funniest story. 

In this example, the subject— story —is being compared to a group of objects—other stories. The superlative adjective “funniest” implies that this particular story is the funniest out of all the stories ever, period. Other common superlative adjectives are best, worst, craziest, and happiest... though there are many more than that! 

It’s also important to know that you can often omit the object from the end of the sentence when using superlative adjectives, like this: “Their story was the funniest.” We still know that “their story” is being compared to other stories without the object at the end of the sentence.

Determiners

The last subclass of adjectives we want to look at are determiners. Determiners are words that determine what kind of reference a noun or noun phrase makes. These words are placed in front of nouns to make it clear what the noun is referring to. Determiners are an example of a part of speech subclass that contains a lot of subclasses of its own. Here is a list of the different types of determiners: 

• Definite article: the
• Indefinite articles : a, an 
• Demonstratives: this, that, these, those
• Pronouns and possessive determiners: my, your, his, her, its, our, their
• Quantifiers : a little, a few, many, much, most, some, any, enough
• Numbers: one, twenty, fifty
• Distributives: all, both, half, either, neither, each, every
• Difference words : other, another
• Pre-determiners: such, what, rather, quite

Here are some examples of how determiners can be used in sentences: 

Definite article: Get in the car.  

Demonstrative: Could you hand me that magazine?  

Possessive determiner: Please put away your clothes. 

Distributive: He ate all of the pie. 

Though some of the words above might not seem descriptive, they actually do describe the specificity and definiteness, relationship, and quantity or amount of a noun or noun phrase. For example, the definite article “the” (a type of determiner) indicates that a noun refers to a specific thing or entity. The indefinite article “an,” on the other hand, indicates that a noun refers to a nonspecific entity. 

One quick note, since English is always more complicated than it seems: while articles are most commonly classified as adjectives, they can also function as adverbs in specific situations, too. Not only that, some people are taught that determiners are their own part of speech...which means that some people are taught there are 9 parts of speech instead of 8! 

It can be a little confusing, which is why we have a whole article explaining how articles function as a part of speech to help clear things up . 

Adverbs can be used to answer questions like "when?" and "how long?"

Adverbs are words that modify verbs, adjectives (including determiners), clauses, prepositions, and sentences. Adverbs typically answer the questions how?, in what way?, when?, where?, and to what extent? In answering these questions, adverbs function to express frequency, degree, manner, time, place, and level of certainty . Adverbs can answer these questions in the form of single words, or in the form of adverbial phrases or adverbial clauses. 

Adverbs are commonly known for being words that end in -ly, but there’s actually a bit more to adverbs than that, which we’ll dive into while we look at the subclasses of adverbs!

Subclasses Of Adverbs, Including Examples

There are many types of adverbs, but the main subclasses we’ll look at are conjunctive adverbs, and adverbs of place, time, manner, degree, and frequency. 

Conjunctive Adverbs

Conjunctive adverbs look like coordinating conjunctions (which we’ll talk about later!), but they are actually their own category: conjunctive adverbs are words that connect independent clauses into a single sentence . These adverbs appear after a semicolon and before a comma in sentences, like in these two examples: 

She was exhausted; nevertheless , she went for a five mile run. 

They didn’t call; instead , they texted.  

Though conjunctive adverbs are frequently used to create shorter sentences using a semicolon and comma, they can also appear at the beginning of sentences, like this: 

He chopped the vegetables. Meanwhile, I boiled the pasta.  

One thing to keep in mind is that conjunctive adverbs come with a comma. When you use them, be sure to include a comma afterward! 

There are a lot of conjunctive adverbs, but some common ones include also, anyway, besides, finally, further, however, indeed, instead, meanwhile, nevertheless, next, nonetheless, now, otherwise, similarly, then, therefore, and thus.  

Adverbs of Place, Time, Manner, Degree, and Frequency

There are also adverbs of place, time, manner, degree, and frequency. Each of these types of adverbs express a different kind of meaning. 

Adverbs of place express where an action is done or where an event occurs. These are used after the verb, direct object, or at the end of a sentence. A sentence like “She walked outside to watch the sunset” uses outside as an adverb of place. 

Adverbs of time explain when something happens. These adverbs are used at the beginning or at the end of sentences. In a sentence like “The game should be over soon,” soon functions as an adverb of time. 

Adverbs of manner describe the way in which something is done or how something happens. These are the adverbs that usually end in the familiar -ly.  If we were to write “She quickly finished her homework,” quickly is an adverb of manner. 

Adverbs of degree tell us the extent to which something happens or occurs. If we were to say “The play was quite interesting,” quite tells us the extent of how interesting the play was. Thus, quite is an adverb of degree.  

Finally, adverbs of frequency express how often something happens . In a sentence like “They never know what to do with themselves,” never is an adverb of frequency. 

Five subclasses of adverbs is a lot, so we’ve organized the words that fall under each category in a nifty table for you here: 

It’s important to know about these subclasses of adverbs because many of them don’t follow the old adage that adverbs end in -ly. 

Here's a helpful list of pronouns. (Attanata / Flickr )

#5: Pronouns

Pronouns are words that can be substituted for a noun or noun phrase in a sentence . Pronouns function to make sentences less clunky by allowing people to avoid repeating nouns over and over. For example, if you were telling someone a story about your friend Destiny, you wouldn’t keep repeating their name over and over again every time you referred to them. Instead, you’d use a pronoun—like they or them—to refer to Destiny throughout the story. 

Pronouns are typically short words, often only two or three letters long. The most familiar pronouns in the English language are they, she, and he. But these aren’t the only pronouns. There are many more pronouns in English that fall under different subclasses!

Subclasses of Pronouns, Including Examples

There are many subclasses of pronouns, but the most commonly used subclasses are personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, indefinite pronouns, and interrogative pronouns. 

Personal Pronouns

Personal pronouns are probably the most familiar type of pronoun. Personal pronouns include I, me, you, she, her, him, he, we, us, they, and them. These are called personal pronouns because they refer to a person! Personal pronouns can replace specific nouns in sentences, like a person’s name, or refer to specific groups of people, like in these examples: 

Did you see Gia pole vault at the track meet? Her form was incredible!

The Cycling Club is meeting up at six. They said they would be at the park. 

In both of the examples above, a pronoun stands in for a proper noun to avoid repetitiveness. Her replaces Gia in the first example, and they replaces the Cycling Club in the second example. 

(It’s also worth noting that personal pronouns are one of the easiest ways to determine what point of view a writer is using.) 

Possessive Pronouns

Possessive pronouns are used to indicate that something belongs to or is the possession of someone. The possessive pronouns fall into two categories: limiting and absolute. In a sentence, absolute possessive pronouns can be substituted for the thing that belongs to a person, and limiting pronouns cannot. 

The limiting pronouns are my, your, its, his, her, our, their, and whose, and the absolute pronouns are mine, yours, his, hers, ours, and theirs . Here are examples of a limiting possessive pronoun and absolute possessive pronoun used in a sentence: 

Limiting possessive pronoun: Juan is fixing his car. 

In the example above, the car belongs to Juan, and his is the limiting possessive pronoun that shows the car belongs to Juan. Now, here’s an example of an absolute pronoun in a sentence: 

Absolute possessive pronoun: Did you buy your tickets ? We already bought ours . 

In this example, the tickets belong to whoever we is, and in the second sentence, ours is the absolute possessive pronoun standing in for the thing that “we” possess—the tickets. 

Demonstrative Pronouns, Interrogative Pronouns, and Indefinite Pronouns

Demonstrative pronouns include the words that, this, these, and those. These pronouns stand in for a noun or noun phrase that has already been mentioned in a sentence or conversation. This and these are typically used to refer to objects or entities that are nearby distance-wise, and that and those usually refer to objects or entities that are farther away. Here’s an example of a demonstrative pronoun used in a sentence: 

The books are stacked up in the garage. Can you put those away? 

The books have already been mentioned, and those is the demonstrative pronoun that stands in to refer to them in the second sentence above. The use of those indicates that the books aren’t nearby—they’re out in the garage. Here’s another example: 

Do you need shoes? Here...you can borrow these. 

In this sentence, these refers to the noun shoes. Using the word these tells readers that the shoes are nearby...maybe even on the speaker’s feet! 

Indefinite pronouns are used when it isn’t necessary to identify a specific person or thing . The indefinite pronouns are one, other, none, some, anybody, everybody, and no one. Here’s one example of an indefinite pronoun used in a sentence: 

Promise you can keep a secret? 

Of course. I won’t tell anyone. 

In this example, the person speaking in the second two sentences isn’t referring to any particular people who they won’t tell the secret to. They’re saying that, in general, they won’t tell anyone . That doesn’t specify a specific number, type, or category of people who they won’t tell the secret to, which is what makes the pronoun indefinite. 

Finally, interrogative pronouns are used in questions, and these pronouns include who, what, which, and whose. These pronouns are simply used to gather information about specific nouns—persons, places, and ideas. Let’s look at two examples of interrogative pronouns used in sentences: 

Do you remember which glass was mine? 

What time are they arriving? 

In the first glass, the speaker wants to know more about which glass belongs to whom. In the second sentence, the speaker is asking for more clarity about a specific time. 

Conjunctions hook phrases and clauses together so they fit like pieces of a puzzle.

#6: Conjunctions

Conjunctions are words that are used to connect words, phrases, clauses, and sentences in the English language. This function allows conjunctions to connect actions, ideas, and thoughts as well. Conjunctions are also used to make lists within sentences. (Conjunctions are also probably the most famous part of speech, since they were immortalized in the famous “Conjunction Junction” song from Schoolhouse Rock .) 

You’re probably familiar with and, but, and or as conjunctions, but let’s look into some subclasses of conjunctions so you can learn about the array of conjunctions that are out there!

Subclasses of Conjunctions, Including Examples

Coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, and correlative conjunctions are three subclasses of conjunctions. Each of these types of conjunctions functions in a different way in sentences!

Coordinating Conjunctions

Coordinating conjunctions are probably the most familiar type of conjunction. These conjunctions include the words for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so (people often recommend using the acronym FANBOYS to remember the seven coordinating conjunctions!). 

Coordinating conjunctions are responsible for connecting two independent clauses in sentences, but can also be used to connect two words in a sentence. Here are two examples of coordinating conjunctions that connect two independent clauses in a sentence: 

He wanted to go to the movies, but he couldn’t find his car keys. 

They put on sunscreen, and they went to the beach. 

Next, here are two examples of coordinating conjunctions that connect two words: 

Would you like to cook or order in for dinner? 

The storm was loud yet refreshing. 

The two examples above show that coordinating conjunctions can connect different types of words as well. In the first example, the coordinating conjunction “or” connects two verbs; in the second example, the coordinating conjunction “yet” connects two adjectives. 

But wait! Why does the first set of sentences have commas while the second set of sentences doesn’t? When using a coordinating conjunction, put a comma before the conjunction when it’s connecting two complete sentences . Otherwise, there’s no comma necessary. 

Subordinating Conjunctions

Subordinating conjunctions are used to link an independent clause to a dependent clause in a sentence. This type of conjunction always appears at the beginning of a dependent clause, which means that subordinating conjunctions can appear at the beginning of a sentence or in the middle of a sentence following an independent clause. (If you’re unsure about what independent and dependent clauses are, be sure to check out our guide to compound sentences.) 

Here is an example of a subordinating conjunction that appears at the beginning of a sentence: 

Because we were hungry, we ordered way too much food. 

Now, here’s an example of a subordinating conjunction that appears in the middle of a sentence, following an independent clause and a comma: 

Rakim was scared after the power went out. 

See? In the example above, the subordinating conjunction after connects the independent clause Rakim was scared to the dependent clause after the power went out. Subordinating conjunctions include (but are not limited to!) the following words: after, as, because, before, even though, one, since, unless, until, whenever, and while. 

Correlative Conjunctions

Finally, correlative conjunctions are conjunctions that come in pairs, like both/and, either/or, and neither/nor. The two correlative conjunctions that come in a pair must appear in different parts of a sentence to make sense— they correlate the meaning in one part of the sentence with the meaning in another part of the sentence . Makes sense, right? 

Here are two examples of correlative conjunctions used in a sentence: 

We’re either going to the Farmer’s Market or the Natural Grocer’s for our shopping today. 

They’re going to have to get dog treats for both Piper and Fudge. 

Other pairs of correlative conjunctions include as many/as, not/but, not only/but also, rather/than, such/that, and whether/or. 

Interjections are single words that express emotions that end in an exclamation point. Cool!

#7: Interjections 

Interjections are words that often appear at the beginning of sentences or between sentences to express emotions or sentiments such as excitement, surprise, joy, disgust, anger, or even pain. Commonly used interjections include wow!, yikes!, ouch!, or ugh! One clue that an interjection is being used is when an exclamation point appears after a single word (but interjections don’t have to be followed by an exclamation point). And, since interjections usually express emotion or feeling, they’re often referred to as being exclamatory. Wow! 

Interjections don’t come together with other parts of speech to form bigger grammatical units, like phrases or clauses. There also aren’t strict rules about where interjections should appear in relation to other sentences . While it’s common for interjections to appear before sentences that describe an action or event that the interjection helps explain, interjections can appear after sentences that contain the action they’re describing as well. 

Subclasses of Interjections, Including Examples

There are two main subclasses of interjections: primary interjections and secondary interjections. Let’s take a look at these two types of interjections!

Primary Interjections  

Primary interjections are single words, like oh!, wow!, or ouch! that don’t enter into the actual structure of a sentence but add to the meaning of a sentence. Here’s an example of how a primary interjection can be used before a sentence to add to the meaning of the sentence that follows it: 

Ouch ! I just burned myself on that pan!

While someone who hears, I just burned myself on that pan might assume that the person who said that is now in pain, the interjection Ouch! makes it clear that burning oneself on the pan definitely was painful. 

Secondary Interjections

Secondary interjections are words that have other meanings but have evolved to be used like interjections in the English language and are often exclamatory. Secondary interjections can be mixed with greetings, oaths, or swear words. In many cases, the use of secondary interjections negates the original meaning of the word that is being used as an interjection. Let’s look at a couple of examples of secondary interjections here: 

Well , look what the cat dragged in!

Heck, I’d help if I could, but I’ve got to get to work. 

You probably know that the words well and heck weren’t originally used as interjections in the English language. Well originally meant that something was done in a good or satisfactory way, or that a person was in good health. Over time and through repeated usage, it’s come to be used as a way to express emotion, such as surprise, anger, relief, or resignation, like in the example above. 

This is a handy list of common prepositional phrases. (attanatta / Flickr) 

#8: Prepositions

The last part of speech we’re going to define is the preposition. Prepositions are words that are used to connect other words in a sentence—typically nouns and verbs—and show the relationship between those words. Prepositions convey concepts such as comparison, position, place, direction, movement, time, possession, and how an action is completed. 

Subclasses of Prepositions, Including Examples

The subclasses of prepositions are simple prepositions, double prepositions, participle prepositions, and prepositional phrases. 

Simple Prepositions

Simple prepositions appear before and between nouns, adjectives, or adverbs in sentences to convey relationships between people, living creatures, things, or places . Here are a couple of examples of simple prepositions used in sentences: 

I’ll order more ink before we run out. 

Your phone was beside your wallet. 

In the first example, the preposition before appears between the noun ink and the personal pronoun we to convey a relationship. In the second example, the preposition beside appears between the verb was and the possessive pronoun your.

In both examples, though, the prepositions help us understand how elements in the sentence are related to one another. In the first sentence, we know that the speaker currently has ink but needs more before it’s gone. In the second sentence, the preposition beside helps us understand how the wallet and the phone are positioned relative to one another! 

Double Prepositions

Double prepositions are exactly what they sound like: two prepositions joined together into one unit to connect phrases, nouns, and pronouns with other words in a sentence. Common examples of double prepositions include outside of, because of, according to, next to, across from, and on top of. Here is an example of a double preposition in a sentence: 

I thought you were sitting across from me. 

You see? Across and from both function as prepositions individually. When combined together in a sentence, they create a double preposition. (Also note that the prepositions help us understand how two people— you and I— are positioned with one another through spacial relationship.)  

Prepositional Phrases

Finally, prepositional phrases are groups of words that include a preposition and a noun or pronoun. Typically, the noun or pronoun that appears after the preposition in a prepositional phrase is called the object of the preposition. The object always appears at the end of the prepositional phrase. Additionally, prepositional phrases never include a verb or a subject. Here are two examples of prepositional phrases: 

The cat sat under the chair . 

In the example above, “under” is the preposition, and “the chair” is the noun, which functions as the object of the preposition. Here’s one more example: 

We walked through the overgrown field . 

Now, this example demonstrates one more thing you need to know about prepositional phrases: they can include an adjective before the object. In this example, “through” is the preposition, and “field” is the object. “Overgrown” is an adjective that modifies “the field,” and it’s quite common for adjectives to appear in prepositional phrases like the one above. 

While that might sound confusing, don’t worry: the key is identifying the preposition in the first place! Once you can find the preposition, you can start looking at the words around it to see if it forms a compound preposition, a double preposition of a prepositional phrase. 

10 Question Quiz: Test Your Knowledge of Parts of Speech Definitions and Examples

Since we’ve covered a lot of material about the 8 parts of speech with examples ( a lot of them!), we want to give you an opportunity to review and see what you’ve learned! While it might seem easier to just use a parts of speech finder instead of learning all this stuff, our parts of speech quiz can help you continue building your knowledge of the 8 parts of speech and master each one. 

Are you ready? Here we go:  

1) What are the 8 parts of speech? 

a) Noun, article, adverb, antecedent, verb, adjective, conjunction, interjection b) Noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, determiner, clause, adjective, preposition c) Noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, conjunction, interjection, preposition

2) Which parts of speech have subclasses?

a) Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs b) Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions c) All of them! There are many types of words within each part of speech.

3) What is the difference between common nouns and proper nouns?

a) Common nouns don’t refer to specific people, places, or entities, but proper nouns do refer to specific people, places, or entities.  b) Common nouns refer to regular, everyday people, places, or entities, but proper nouns refer to famous people, places, or entities.  c) Common nouns refer to physical entities, like people, places, and objects, but proper nouns refer to nonphysical entities, like feelings, ideas, and experiences.

4) In which of the following sentences is the emboldened word a verb?

a) He was frightened by the horror film .   b) He adjusted his expectations after the first plan fell through.  c) She walked briskly to get there on time.

5) Which of the following is a correct definition of adjectives, and what other part of speech do adjectives modify?

a) Adjectives are describing words, and they modify nouns and noun phrases.  b) Adjectives are describing words, and they modify verbs and adverbs.  c) Adjectives are describing words, and they modify nouns, verbs, and adverbs.

6) Which of the following describes the function of adverbs in sentences?

a) Adverbs express frequency, degree, manner, time, place, and level of certainty. b) Adverbs express an action performed by a subject.  c) Adverbs describe nouns and noun phrases.

7) Which of the following answers contains a list of personal pronouns?

a) This, that, these, those b) I, you, me, we, he, she, him, her, they, them c) Who, what, which, whose

8) Where do interjections typically appear in a sentence?

a) Interjections can appear at the beginning of or in between sentences. b) Interjections appear at the end of sentences.  c) Interjections appear in prepositional phrases.

9) Which of the following sentences contains a prepositional phrase?

a) The dog happily wagged his tail.  b) The cow jumped over the moon.  c) She glared, angry that he forgot the flowers.

10) Which of the following is an accurate definition of a “part of speech”?

a) A category of words that serve a similar grammatical purpose in sentences. b) A category of words that are of similar length and spelling. c) A category of words that mean the same thing.

So, how did you do? If you got 1C, 2C, 3A, 4B, 5A, 6A, 7B, 8A, 9B, and 10A, you came out on top! There’s a lot to remember where the parts of speech are concerned, and if you’re looking for more practice like our quiz, try looking around for parts of speech games or parts of speech worksheets online!

What’s Next?

You might be brushing up on your grammar so you can ace the verbal portions of the SAT or ACT. Be sure you check out our guides to the grammar you need to know before you tackle those tests! Here’s our expert guide to the grammar rules you need to know for the SAT , and this article teaches you the 14 grammar rules you’ll definitely see on the ACT.

When you have a good handle on parts of speech, it can make writing essays tons easier. Learn how knowing parts of speech can help you get a perfect 12 on the ACT Essay (or an 8/8/8 on the SAT Essay ).

While we’re on the topic of grammar: keep in mind that knowing grammar rules is only part of the battle when it comes to the verbal and written portions of the SAT and ACT. Having a good vocabulary is also important to making the perfect score ! Here are 262 vocabulary words you need to know before you tackle your standardized tests.

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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Grammar: Main Parts of Speech

Definitions and examples.

The name of something, like a person, animal, place, thing, or concept. Nouns are typically used as subjects, objects, objects of prepositions, and modifiers of other nouns.

• I = subject
• the dissertation = object
• in Chapter 4 = object of a preposition
• research = modifier

This expresses what the person, animal, place, thing, or concept does. In English, verbs follow the noun.

• It takes a good deal of dedication to complete a doctoral degree.
• She studied hard for the test.
• Writing a dissertation is difficult. (The "be" verb is also sometimes referred to as a copula or a linking verb. It links the subject, in this case "writing a dissertation," to the complement or the predicate of the sentence, in this case, "hard.")

This describes a noun or pronoun. Adjectives typically come before a noun or after a stative verb, like the verb "to be."

• Diligent describes the student and appears before the noun student .
• Difficult is placed after the to be verb and describes what it is like to balance time.

Remember that adjectives in English have no plural form. The same form of the adjective is used for both singular and plural nouns.

• A different idea
• Some different ideas
• INCORRECT: some differents ideas

This gives more information about the verb and about how the action was done. Adverbs tells how, where, when, why, etc. Depending on the context, the adverb can come before or after the verb or at the beginning or end of a sentence.

• Enthusiastically describes how he completed the course and answers the how question.
• Recently modifies the verb enroll and answers the when question.
• Then describes and modifies the entire sentence. See this link on transitions for more examples of conjunctive adverbs (adverbs that join one idea to another to improve the cohesion of the writing).

This word substitutes for a noun or a noun phrase (e.g. it, she, he, they, that, those,…).

• they = applicants
• He = Smith; that = ideas; those = those ideas

This word makes the reference of the noun more specific (e.g. his, her, my, their, the, a, an, this, these, … ).

• Jones published her book in 2015.
• The book was very popular.

Preposition

This comes before a noun or a noun phrase and links it to other parts of the sentence. These are usually single words (e.g., on, at, by ,… ) but can be up to four words (e.g., as far as, in addition to, as a result of, …).

• I chose to interview teachers in the district closest to me.
• The recorder was placed next to the interviewee.
• I stopped the recording in the middle of the interview due to a low battery.

Conjunction

A word that joins two clauses. These can be coordinating (an easy way to remember this is memorizing FANBOYS = for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) or subordinating (e.g., because, although, when, …).

• The results were not significant, so the alternative hypothesis was accepted.
• Although the results seem promising, more research must be conducted in this area.

Auxiliary Verbs

Helping verbs. They are used to build up complete verbs.

• Primary auxiliary verbs (be, have, do) show the progressive, passive, perfect, and negative verb tenses .
• Modal auxiliary verbs (can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would) show a variety of meanings. They represent ability, permission, necessity, and degree of certainty. These are always followed by the simple form of the verb.
• Semimodal auxiliary verbs (e.g., be going to, ought to, have to, had better, used to, be able to,…). These are always followed by the simple form of the verb.
• primary: have investigated = present perfect tense; has not been determined = passive, perfect, negative form
• The modal could shows ability, and the verb conduct stays in its simple form; the modal may shows degree of certainty, and the verb lead stays in its simple form.
• These semimodals are followed by the simple form of the verb.

Common Endings

Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs often have unique word endings, called suffixes . Looking at the suffix can help to distinguish the word from other parts of speech and help identify the function of the word in the sentence. It is important to use the correct word form in written sentences so that readers can clearly follow the intended meaning.

Here are some common endings for the basic parts of speech. If ever in doubt, consult the dictionary for the correct word form.

Common Noun Endings

Common verb endings, common adjective endings, common adverb endings, placement and position of adjectives and adverbs, order of adjectives.

If more than one adjective is used in a sentence, they tend to occur in a certain order. In English, two or three adjectives modifying a noun tend to be the limit. However, when writing in APA, not many adjectives should be used (since APA is objective, scientific writing). If adjectives are used, the framework below can be used as guidance in adjective placement.

• Determiner (e.g., this, that, these, those, my, mine, your, yours, him, his, hers they, their, some, our, several,…) or article (a, an, the)
• Opinion, quality, or observation adjective (e.g., lovely, useful, cute, difficult, comfortable)
• Physical description
• (a) size (big, little, tall, short)
• (b) shape (circular,  irregular, triangular)
• (c) age (old, new, young, adolescent)
• (d) color (red, green, yellow)
• Origin (e.g., English, Mexican, Japanese)
• Material (e.g., cotton, metal, plastic)
• Qualifier (noun used as an adjective to modify the noun that follows; i.e., campus activities, rocking chair, business suit)
• Head noun that the adjectives are describing (e.g., activities, chair, suit)

For example:

• This (1) lovely (2) new (3) wooden (4) Italian (5) rocking (6) chair (7) is in my office.
• Your (1) beautiful (2) green (3) French (4) silk (5) business (6) suit (7) has a hole in it.

Commas With Multiple Adjectives

A comma is used between two adjectives only if the adjectives belong to the same category (for example, if there are two adjectives describing color or two adjectives describing material). To test this, ask these two questions:

• Does the sentence make sense if the adjectives are written in reverse order?
• Does the sentence make sense if the word “and” is written between them?

If the answer is yes to the above questions, the adjectives are separated with a comma. Also keep in mind a comma is never used before the noun that it modifies.

• This useful big round old green English leather rocking chair is comfortable . (Note that there are no commas here because there is only one adjective from each category.)
• A lovely large yellow, red, and green oil painting was hung on the wall. (Note the commas between yellow, red, and green since these are all in the same category of color.)

Position of Adverbs

Adverbs can appear in different positions in a sentence.

• At the beginning of a sentence: Generally , teachers work more than 40 hours a week.
• After the subject, before the verb: Teachers generally work more than 40 hours a week.
• At the end of a sentence: Teachers work more than 40 hours a week, generally .
• However, an adverb is not placed between a verb and a direct object. INCORRECT: Teachers work generally more than 40 hours a week.

More Detailed Rules for the Position of Adverbs

• Adverbs that modify the whole sentence can move to different positions, such as certainly, recently, fortunately, actually, and obviously.
• Recently , I started a new job.
• I recently started a new job.
• I started a new job recently .
• Many adverbs of frequency modify the entire sentence and not just the verb, such as frequently, usually, always, sometimes, often , and seldom . These adverbs appear in the middle of the sentence, after the subject.
• INCORRECT: Frequently she gets time to herself.
• INCORRECT: She gets time to herself frequently .
• She has frequently exercised during her lunch hour. (The adverb appears after the first auxiliary verb.)
• She is frequently hanging out with old friends. (The adverb appears after the to be verb.)
• Adverbial phrases work best at the end of a sentence.
• He greeted us in a very friendly way .
• I collected data for 2 months .

Main Parts of Speech Video Playlist

Note that these videos were created while APA 6 was the style guide edition in use. There may be some examples of writing that have not been updated to APA 7 guidelines.

• Mastering the Mechanics: Nouns (video transcript)
• Mastering the Mechanics: Introduction to Verbs (video transcript)
• Mastering the Mechanics: Articles (video transcript)
• Mastering the Mechanics: Introduction to Pronouns (video transcript)
• Mastering the Mechanics: Modifiers (video transcript)

Writing Tools: Dictionary and Thesaurus Refresher Video

Note that this video was created while APA 6 was the style guide edition in use. There may be some examples of writing that have not been updated to APA 7 guidelines.

• Writing Tools: Dictionary and Thesaurus Refresher (video transcript)

Related Resources

Knowledge Check: Main Parts of Speech

Didn't find what you need? Email us at [email protected] .

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Parts of Speech: The Ultimate Guide for Students and Teachers

This article is part of the ultimate guide to language for teachers and students. Click the buttons below to view these.

What are Parts of Speech ?

Just as a skilled bricklayer must get to grips with the trowel, brick hammer, tape measure, and spirit level, the student-writer must develop a thorough understanding of the tools of their trade too.

In English, words can be categorized according to their common syntactic function in a sentence, i.e. the job they perform.

We call these different categories Parts of Speech . Understanding the various parts of speech and how they work has several compelling benefits for our students.

Without first acquiring a firm grasp of the various parts of speech, students will struggle to fully comprehend how language works. This is essential not only for the development of their reading comprehension but their writing skills too.

Parts of speech are the core building blocks of grammar . To understand how a language works at a sentence and a whole-text level, we must first master parts of speech.

In English, we can identify eight of these individual parts of speech, and these will provide the focus for our Complete Guide to Parts of Speech .

THE EIGHT PARTS OF SPEECH (Click to jump to each section)

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Often the first word a child speaks will be a noun, for example, Mum , Dad , cow , dog , etc.

Nouns are naming words, and, as most school kids can recite, they are the names of people, places, and things . But, what isn’t as widely understood by many of our students is that nouns can be further classified into more specific categories. 

These categories are:

Common Nouns

Proper nouns, concrete nouns, abstract nouns, collective nouns, countable nouns, uncountable nouns.

All nouns can be classified as either common or proper .

Common nouns are the general names of people, places, and things. They are groups or classes on their own, rather than specific types of people, places, or things such as we find in proper nouns.

Common nouns can be further classified as abstract or concrete – more on this shortly!

Some examples of common nouns include:

People: teacher, author, engineer, artist, singer.

Places: country, city, town, house, garden.

Things: language, trophy, magazine, movie, book.

Proper nouns are the specific names for people, places, and things. Unlike common nouns, which are always lowercase, proper nouns are capitalized. This makes them easy to identify in a text.

Where possible, using proper nouns in place of common nouns helps bring precision to a student’s writing.

Some examples of proper nouns include:

People: Mrs Casey, J.K. Rowling, Nikola Tesla, Pablo Picasso, Billie Eilish.

Places: Australia, San Francisco, Llandovery, The White House, Gardens of Versailles.

Things: Bulgarian, The World Cup, Rolling Stone, The Lion King, The Hunger Games.

Nouns Teaching Activity: Common vs Proper Nouns

• Provide students with books suitable for their current reading level.
• Instruct students to go through a page or two and identify all the nouns.
• Ask students to sort these nouns into two lists according to whether they are common nouns or proper nouns.

As mentioned, all common and proper nouns can be further classified as either concrete or abstract .

A concrete noun is any noun that can be experienced through one of the five senses. In other words, if you can see, smell, hear, taste, or touch it, then it’s a concrete noun.

Some examples of concrete nouns include:

Abstract nouns refer to those things that can’t be experienced or identified through the five senses.

They are not physical things we can perceive but intangible concepts and ideas, qualities and states.

Some examples of abstract nouns include:

Nouns Teaching Activity: Concrete Vs. Abstract Nouns

• Provide students with a book suitable for their current reading level.
• Instruct students to go through a page or two and identify all the nouns (the lists from Practice Activity #1 may be suitable).
• This time, ask students to sort these nouns into two lists according to whether they are concrete or abstract nouns.

A collective noun is the name of a group of people or things. That is, a collective noun always refers to more than one of something.

Some examples of collective nouns include:

People: a board of directors, a team of football players, a cast of actors, a band of musicians, a class of students.

Places: a range of mountains, a suite of rooms, a union of states, a chain of islands.

Things: a bale of hay, a constellation of stars, a bag of sweets, a school of fish, a flock of seagulls.

Countable nouns are nouns that refer to things that can be counted. They come in two flavors: singular and plural .

In their singular form, countable nouns are often preceded by the article, e.g. a , an , or the .

In their plural form, countable nouns are often preceded by a number. They can also be used in conjunction with quantifiers such as a few and many .

Some examples of countable nouns include:

COUNTABLE NOUNS EXAMPLES

Also known as mass nouns, uncountable nouns are, as their name suggests, impossible to count. Abstract ideas such as bravery and compassion are uncountable, as are things like liquid and bread .

These types of nouns are always treated in the singular and usually do not have a plural form. 

They can stand alone or be used in conjunction with words and phrases such as any , some , a little , a lot of , and much .

Some examples of uncountable nouns include:

UNCOUNTABLE NOUNS EXAMPLES

Nouns teaching activity: how many can you list .

• Organize students into small groups to work collaboratively.
• Challenge students to list as many countable and uncountable nouns as they can in ten minutes.
• To make things more challenging, stipulate that there must be an uncountable noun and a countable noun to gain a point.
• The winning group is the one that scores the most points.

Without a verb, there is no sentence! Verbs are the words we use to represent both internal and external actions or states of being. Without a verb, nothing happens.

There are many different types of verbs. Here, we will look at five important verb forms organised according to the jobs they perform:

Dynamic Verbs

Stative verbs, transitive verbs, intransitive verbs, auxiliary verbs.

Each verb can be classified as being either an action or a stative verb.

Dynamic or action verbs describe the physical activity performed by the subject of a sentence. This type of verb is usually the first we learn as children. 

For example, run , hit , throw , hide , eat , sleep , watch , write , etc. are all dynamic verbs, as is any action performed by the body.

Let’s see a few examples in sentences:

• I jogged around the track three times.
• She will dance as if her life depends on it.
• She took a candy from the bag, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth.

If a verb doesn’t describe a physical activity, then it is a stative verb.

Stative verbs refer to states of being, conditions, or mental processes. Generally, we can classify stative verbs into four types:

• Emotions/Thoughts

Some examples of stative verbs include: 

Senses: hurt, see, smell, taste, hear, etc.

Emotions: love, doubt, desire, remember, believe, etc.

Being: be, have, require, involve, contain, etc.

Possession: want, include, own, have, belong, etc.

Here are some stative verbs at work in sentences:

• That is one thing we can agree on.
• I remember my first day at school like it was yesterday.
• The university requires students to score at least 80%.
• She has only three remaining.

Sometimes verbs can fit into more than one category, e.g., be , have , look , see , e.g.,

• She looks beautiful. (Stative)
• I look through the telescope. (Dynamic)

Each action or stative verb can also be further classified as transitive or intransitive .

A transitive verb takes a direct object after it. The object is the noun, noun phrase, or pronoun that has something done to it by the subject of the sentence.

We see this in the most straightforward English sentences, i.e., the Subject-Verb-Object or SVO sentence. 

Here are two examples to illustrate. Note: the subject of each sentence is underlined, and the transitive verbs are in bold.

• The teacher answered the student’s questions.
• She studies languages at university.
• My friend loves cabbage.

Most sentences in English employ transitive verbs.

An intransitive verb does not take a direct object after it. It is important to note that only nouns, noun phrases, and pronouns can be classed as direct objects. 

Here are some examples of intransitive verbs – notice how none of these sentences has direct objects after their verbs.

• Jane’s health improved .
• The car ran smoothly.
• The school opens at 9 o’clock.

Auxiliary verbs, also known as ‘helping’ verbs, work with other verbs to affect the meaning of a sentence. They do this by combining with a main verb to alter the sentence’s tense, mood, or voice.

Auxiliary verbs will frequently use not in the negative.

There are relatively few auxiliary verbs in English. Here is a list of the main ones:

• be (am, are, is, was, were, being)
• do (did, does, doing)
• have (had, has, having)

Here are some examples of auxiliary verbs (in bold) in action alongside a main verb (underlined).

She is working as hard as she can.

• You must not eat dinner until after five o’clock.
• The parents may come to the graduation ceremony.

The Subject-Auxiliary Inversion Test

To test whether or not a verb is an auxiliary verb, you can use the Subject-Auxiliary Inversion Test .

• Take the sentence, e.g:
• Now, invert the subject and the suspected auxiliary verb to see if it creates a question.

Is she working as hard as she can?

• Can it take ‘not’ in the negative form?

She is not working as hard as she can.

• If the answer to both of these questions is yes, you have an auxiliary verb. If not, you have a full verb.

Verbs Teaching Activity: Identify the Verbs

• Instruct students to go through an appropriate text length (e.g., paragraph, page, etc.) and compile a list of verbs.
• In groups, students should then discuss and categorize each verb according to whether they think they are dynamic or stative, transitive or intransitive, and/or auxiliary verbs.

The job of an adjective is to modify a noun or a pronoun. It does this by describing, quantifying, or identifying the noun or pronoun. Adjectives help to make writing more interesting and specific. Usually, the adjective is placed before the word it modifies.

As with other parts of speech, not all adjectives are the same. There are many different types of adjectives and, in this article, we will look at:

Descriptive Adjectives

• Degrees of Adjectives

Quantitative Adjectives

Demonstrative adjectives, possessive adjectives, interrogative adjectives, proper adjectives.

Descriptive adjectives are what most students think of first when asked what an adjective is. Descriptive adjectives tell us something about the quality of the noun or pronoun in question. For this reason, they are sometimes referred to as qualitative adjectives .

Some examples of this type of adjective include:

• hard-working

In sentences, they look like this:

• The pumpkin was enormous .
• It was an impressive feat of athleticism I ever saw.
• Undoubtedly, this was an exquisite vase.
• She faced some tough competition.

Degrees of Adjectives 

Descriptive adjectives have three degrees to express varying degrees of intensity and to compare one thing to another. These degrees are referred to as positive , comparative , and superlative .

The positive degree is the regular form of the descriptive adjective when no comparison is being made, e.g., strong .

The comparative degree is used to compare two people, places, or things, e.g., stronger .

There are several ways to form the comparative, methods include:

• Adding more or less before the adjective
• Adding -er to the end of one syllable adjectives
• For two-syllable adjectives ending in y , change the y to an i and add -er to the end.

The superlative degree is typically used when comparing three or more things to denote the upper or lowermost limit of a quality, e.g., strongest .

There are several ways to form the superlative, including:

• Adding most or least before the adjective
• Adding -est to the end of one syllable adjectives
• For two-syllable adjectives ending in y , change the y to an i and add -est to the end.

There are also some irregular adjectives of degree that follow no discernible pattern that must be learned off by students, e.g., good – better – best .

Let’s take a look at these degrees of adjectives in their different forms.

Let’s take a quick look at some sample sentences:

• It was a beautiful example of kindness. 

Comparative

• The red is nice, but the green is prettier .

Superlative

• This mango is the most delicious fruit I have ever tastiest. 

Quantitive adjectives provide information about how many or how much of the noun or pronoun.

Some quantitive adjectives include:

• She only ate half of her sandwich.
• This is my first time here.
• I would like three slices, please.
• There isn’t a single good reason to go.
• There aren’t many places like it.
• It’s too much of a good thing.
• I gave her a whole box of them.

A demonstrative adjective identifies or emphasizes a noun’s place in time or space. The most common demonstrative adjectives are this , that , these , and those .

Here are some examples of demonstrative adjectives in use:

• This boat is mine.
• That car belongs to her.
• These shoes clash with my dress.
• Those people are from Canada.

Possessive adjectives show ownership, and they are sometimes confused with possessive pronouns.

The most common possessive adjectives are my , your , his , her , our , and their .

Students need to be careful not to confuse these with possessive pronouns such as mine , yours , his (same in both contexts), hers , ours , and theirs .

Here are some examples of possessive adjectives in sentences:

• My favorite food is sushi.
• I would like to read your book when you have finished it.
• I believe her car is the red one.
• This is their way of doing things.
• Our work here is done.

Interrogative adjectives ask questions, and, in common with many types of adjectives, they are always followed by a noun. Basically, these are the question words we use to start questions. Be careful however, interrogative adjectives modify nouns. If the word after the question word is a verb, then you have an interrogative adverb on hand.

Some examples of interrogative adjectives include what , which , and whose .

Let’s take a look at these in action:

• What drink would you like?
• Which car should we take?
• Whose shoes are these?

Please note: Whose can also fit into the possessive adjective category too.

We can think of proper adjectives as the adjective form of proper nouns – remember those? They were the specific names of people, places, and things and need to be capitalized.

Let’s take the proper noun for the place America . If we wanted to make an adjective out of this proper noun to describe something, say, a car we would get ‘ American car’.

Let’s take a look at another few examples:

• Joe enjoyed his cup of Ethiopian coffee.
• My favorite plays are Shakespearean tragedies.
• No doubt about it, Fender guitars are some of the best in the world.
• The Mona Lisa is a fine example of Renaissance art.

Though it may come as a surprise to some, articles are also adjectives as, like all adjectives, they modify nouns. Articles help us determine a noun’s specification. 

For example, ‘a’ and ‘an’ are used in front of an unspecific noun, while ‘the’ is used when referring to a specific noun.

Let’s see some articles as adjectives in action!

• You will find an apple inside the cupboard.
• This is a car.
• The recipe is a family secret.

Adjectives Teaching Activity: Types of Adjective Tally

• Choose a suitable book and assign an appropriate number of pages or length of a chapter for students to work with.
• Students work their way through each page, tallying up the number of each type of adjective they can identify using a table like the one below:
• Note how degrees of adjective has been split into comparative and superlative. The positive forms will take care of in the descriptive category.
• You may wish to adapt this table to exclude the easier categories to identify, such as articles and demonstrative, for example.

Traditionally, adverbs are defined as those words that modify verbs, but they do so much more than that. They can be used not only to describe how verbs are performed but also to modify adjectives, other adverbs, clauses, prepositions, or entire sentences.

With such a broad range of tasks at the feet of the humble adverb, it would be impossible to cover every possibility in this article alone. However, there are five main types of adverbs our students should familiarize themselves with. These are:

Adverbs of Manner

Adverbs of time, adverbs of frequency, adverbs of place, adverbs of degree.

Adverbs of manner describe how or the way in which something happens or is done. This type of adverb is often the first type taught to students. Many of these end with -ly . Some common examples include happily , quickly , sadly , slowly , and fast .

Here are a few taster sentences employing adverbs of manner:

• She cooks Chinese food well .
• The children played happily together.
• The students worked diligently on their projects.
• Her mother taught her to cross the road carefully .
• The date went badly .

Adverbs of time indicate when something happens. Common adverbs of time include before , now , then , after , already , immediately , and soon .

Here are some sentences employing adverbs of time:

• I go to school early on Wednesdays.
• She would like to finish her studies eventually .
• Recently , Sarah moved to Bulgaria.
• I have already finished my homework.
• They have been missing training lately .

While adverbs of time deal with when something happens, adverbs of frequency are concerned with how often something happens. Common adverbs of frequency include always , frequently , sometimes , seldom , and never .

Here’s what they look like in sentences:

• Harry usually goes to bed around ten.
• Rachel rarely eats breakfast in the morning.
• Often , I’ll go home straight after school.
• I occasionally have ketchup on my pizza.
• She seldom goes out with her friends.

Adverbs of place, as the name suggests, describe where something happens or where it is. They can refer to position, distance, or direction. Some common adverbs of place include above , below , beside , inside , and anywhere .

Check out some examples in the sentences below:

• Underneath the bridge, there lived a troll.
• There were pizzerias everywhere in the city.
• We walked around the park in the pouring rain.
• If the door is open, then go inside .
• When I am older, I would like to live nearby .

Adverbs of degree express the degree to which or how much of something is done. They can also be used to describe levels of intensity. Some common adverbs of degree include barely , little , lots , completely , and entirely .

Here are some adverbs of degree at work in sentences:

• I hardly noticed her when she walked into the room.
• The little girl had almost finished her homework.
• The job was completely finished.
• I was so delighted to hear the good news.
• Jack was totally delighted to see Diane after all these years.

Adverb Teaching Activity: The Adverb Generator

• Give students a worksheet containing a table divided into five columns. Each column bears a heading of one of the different types of adverbs ( manner , time , frequency , place , degree ).
• Challenge each group to generate as many different examples of each adverb type and record these in the table.
• The winning group is the one with the most adverbs. As a bonus, or tiebreaker, task the students to make sentences with some of the adverbs.

Pronouns are used in place of a specific noun used earlier in a sentence. They are helpful when the writer wants to avoid repetitive use of a particular noun such as a name. For example, in the following sentences, the pronoun she is used to stand for the girl’s name Mary after it is used in the first sentence. 

Mary loved traveling. She had been to France, Thailand, and Taiwan already, but her favorite place in the world was Australia. She had never seen an animal quite as curious-looking as the duck-billed platypus.

We also see her used in place of Mary’s in the above passage. There are many different pronouns and, in this article, we’ll take a look at:

Subject Pronouns

Object pronouns, possessive pronouns, reflexive pronouns, intensive pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, interrogative pronouns.

Subject pronouns are the type of pronoun most of us think of when we hear the term pronoun . They operate as the subject of a verb in a sentence. They are also known as personal pronouns.

The subject pronouns are:

Here are a few examples of subject pronouns doing what they do best:

• Sarah and I went to the movies last Thursday night.
• That is my pet dog. It is an Irish Wolfhound.
• My friends are coming over tonight, they will be here at seven.
• We won’t all fit into the same car.
• You have done a fantastic job with your grammar homework!

Object pronouns operate as the object of a verb, or a preposition, in a sentence. They act in the same way as object nouns but are used when it is clear what the object is.

The object pronouns are:

Here are a few examples of object pronouns in sentences:

• I told you , this is a great opportunity for you .
• Give her some more time, please.
• I told her I did not want to do it .
• That is for us .
• Catherine is the girl whom I mentioned in my letter.

Possessive pronouns indicate ownership of a noun. For example, in the sentence:

These books are mine .

The word mine stands for my books . It’s important to note that while possessive pronouns look similar to possessive adjectives, their function in a sentence is different.

The possessive pronouns are:

Let’s take a look at how these are used in sentences:

• Yours is the yellow jacket.
• I hope this ticket is mine .
• The train that leaves at midnight is theirs .
• Ours is the first house on the right.
• She is the person whose opinion I value most.
• I believe that is his .

Reflexive pronouns are used in instances where the object and the subject are the same. For example, in the sentence, she did it herself , the words she and herself refer to the same person.

The reflexive pronoun forms are:

Here are a few more examples of reflexive pronouns at work:

• I told myself that numerous times.
• He got himself a new computer with his wages.
• We will go there ourselves .
• You must do it yourself .
• The only thing to fear is fear itself .

This type of pronoun can be used to indicate emphasis. For example, when we write, I spoke to the manager herself , the point is made that we talked to the person in charge and not someone lower down the hierarchy. 

Similar to the reflexive pronouns above, we can easily differentiate between reflexive and intensive pronouns by asking if the pronoun is essential to the sentence’s meaning. If it isn’t, then it is used solely for emphasis, and therefore, it’s an intensive rather than a reflexive pronoun.

Often confused with demonstrative adjectives, demonstrative pronouns can stand alone in a sentence.

When this , that , these , and those are used as demonstrative adjectives they come before the noun they modify. When these same words are used as demonstrative pronouns, they replace a noun rather than modify it.

Here are some examples of demonstrative pronouns in sentences:

• This is delicious.
• That is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
• These are not mine.
• Those belong to the driver.

Interrogative pronouns are used to form questions. They are the typical question words that come at the start of questions, with a question mark coming at the end. The interrogative pronouns are:

Putting them into sentences looks like this:

• What is the name of your best friend?
• Which of these is your favourite?
• Who goes to the market with you?
• Whom do you think will win?
• Whose is that?

Pronoun Teaching Activity: Pronoun Review Table

• Provide students with a review table like the one below to revise the various pronoun forms.
• They can use this table to help them produce independent sentences.
• Once students have had a chance to familiarize themselves thoroughly with each of the different types of pronouns, provide the students with the headings and ask them to complete a table from memory.  

Prepositions

Prepositions provide extra information showing the relationship between a noun or pronoun and another part of a sentence. These are usually short words that come directly before nouns or pronouns, e.g., in , at , on , etc.

There are, of course, many different types of prepositions, each relating to particular types of information. In this article, we will look at:

Prepositions of Time

Prepositions of place, prepositions of movement, prepositions of manner, prepositions of measure.

• Preposition of Agency
• Preposition of Possession
• Preposition of Source

Phrasal Prepositions

It’s worth noting that several prepositional words make an appearance in several different categories of prepositions.

Prepositions of time indicate when something happens. Common prepositions of time include after , at , before , during , in , on .

Let’s see some of these at work:

• I have been here since Thursday.
• My daughter was born on the first of September.
• He went overseas during the war.
• Before you go, can you pay the bill, please?
• We will go out after work.

Sometimes students have difficulty knowing when to use in , on , or at . These little words are often confused. The table below provides helpful guidance to help students use the right preposition in the right context.

The prepositions of place, in , at , on , will be instantly recognisable as they also double as prepositions of time. Again, students can sometimes struggle a little to select the correct one for the situation they are describing. Some guidelines can be helpful.

• If something is contained or confined inside, we use in .
• If something is placed upon a surface, we use on .
• If something is located at a specific point, we use at .

A few example sentences will assist in illustrating these:

• He is in the house.
• I saw it in a magazine.
• In France, we saw many great works of art.
• Put it on the table.
• We sailed on the river.
• Hang that picture on the wall, please.
• We arrived at the airport just after 1 pm.
• I saw her at university.
• The boy stood at the window.

Usually used with verbs of motion, prepositions of movement indicate movement from one place to another. The most commonly used preposition of movement is to .

Some other prepositions of movement include:

Here’s how they look in some sample sentences:

• The ball rolled across the table towards me.
• We looked up into the sky.
• The children ran past the shop on their way home.
• Jackie ran down the road to greet her friend.
• She walked confidently through the curtains and out onto the stage.

Preposition of manner shows us how something is done or how it happens. The most common of these are by , in , like , on , with .

Let’s take a look at how they work in sentences:

• We went to school by bus.
• During the holidays, they traveled across the Rockies on foot.
• Janet went to the airport in a taxi.
• She played soccer like a professional.
• I greeted her with a smile.

Prepositions of measure are used to indicate quantities and specific units of measurement. The two most common of these are by and of .

Check out these sample sentences:

• I’m afraid we only sell that fabric by the meter.
• I will pay you by the hour.
• She only ate half of the ice cream. I ate the other half.
• A kilogram of apples is the same weight as a kilogram of feathers.

Prepositions of Agency

These prepositions indicate the causal relationship between a noun or pronoun and an action. They show the cause of something happening. The most commonly used prepositions of agency are by and with .

Here are some examples of their use in sentences:

• The Harry Potter series was written by J.K. Rowling.
• This bowl was made by a skilled craftsman.
• His heart was filled with love.
• The glass was filled with water.

Prepositions of Possession

Prepositions of possessions indicate who or what something belongs to. The most common of these are of , to , and with .

Let’s take a look:

• He is the husband of my cousin.
• He is a friend of the mayor.
• This once belonged to my grandmother.
• All these lands belong to the Ministry.
• The man with the hat is waiting outside.
• The boy with the big feet tripped and fell.

Prepositions of Source

Prepositions of source indicate where something comes from or its origins. The two most common prepositions of source are from and by . There is some crossover here with prepositions of agency.

Here are some examples:

• He comes from New Zealand.
• These oranges are from our own orchard.
• I was warmed by the heat of the fire.
• She was hugged by her husband.
• The yoghurt is of Bulgarian origin.

Phrasal prepositions are also known as compound prepositions. These are phrases of two or more words that function in the same way as prepositions. That is, they join nouns or pronouns to the rest of the sentence.

Some common phrasal prepositions are:

• According to
• For a change
• In addition to
• In spite of
• Rather than
• With the exception of

Students should be careful of overusing phrasal prepositions as some of them can seem clichéd. Frequently, it’s best to say things in as few words as is necessary.

Preposition Teaching Activity: Pr eposition Sort

• Print out a selection of the different types of prepositions on pieces of paper.
• Organize students into smaller working groups and provide each group with a set of prepositions.
• Using the headings above as categories, challenge students to sort the prepositions into the correct groups. Note that some prepositions will comfortably fit into more than one group.
• The winning group is the one to sort all prepositions correctly first.
• As an extension exercise, students can select a preposition from each category and write a sample sentence for it.

ConjunctionS

Conjunctions are used to connect words, phrases, and clauses. There are three main types of conjunction that are used to join different parts of sentences. These are:

• Coordinating
• Subordinating
• Correlative

Coordinating Conjunctions

These conjunctions are used to join sentence components that are equal such as two words, two phrases, or two clauses. In English, there are seven of these that can be memorized using the mnemonic FANBOYS:

Here are a few example sentences employing coordinating conjunctions:

• As a writer, he needed only a pen and paper.
• I would describe him as strong but lazy.
• Either we go now or not at all.

Subordinating Conjunctions

Subordinating conjunctions are used to introduce dependent clauses in sentences. Basically, dependent clauses are parts of sentences that cannot stand as complete sentences on their own. 

Some of the most common subordinate conjunctions are: 

Let’s take a look at some example sentences:

• I will complete it by Tuesday if I have time.
• Although she likes it, she won’t buy it.
• Jack will give it to you after he finds it.

Correlative Conjunctions

Correlative conjunctions are like shoes; they come in pairs. They work together to make sentences work. Some come correlative conjunctions are:

• either / or
• neither / nor
• Not only / but also

Let’s see how some of these work together:

• If I were you, I would get either the green one or the yellow one.
• John wants neither pity nor help.
• I don’t know whether you prefer horror or romantic movies.

Conjunction Teaching Activity: Conjunction Challenge

• Organize students into Talking Pairs .
• Partner A gives Partner B an example of a conjunction.
• Partner B must state which type of conjunction it is, e.g. coordinating, subordinating, or correlative.
• Partner B must then compose a sentence that uses the conjunction correctly and tell it to Partner A.
• Partners then swap roles.

InterjectionS

Interjections focus on feelings and are generally grammatically unrelated to the rest of the sentence or sentences around them. They convey thoughts and feelings and are common in our speech. They are often followed by exclamation marks in writing. Interjections include expressions such as:

• Eww! That is so gross!
• Oh , I don’t know. I’ve never used one before.
• That’s very… err …generous of you, I suppose.
• Wow! That is fantastic news!
• Uh-Oh! I don’t have any more left.

Interjection Teaching Activity: Create a scenario

• Once students clearly understand what interjections are, brainstorm as a class as many as possible.
• Write a master list of interjections on the whiteboard.
• Partner A suggests an interjection word or phrase to Partner B.
• Partner B must create a fictional scenario where this interjection would be used appropriately.

With a good grasp of the fundamentals of parts of speech, your students will now be equipped to do a deeper dive into the wild waters of English grammar. 

To learn more about the twists and turns of English grammar, check out our comprehensive article on English grammar here.

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9.3 Putting It Together: Steps to Complete Your Introduction

Learning objectives.

• Clearly identify why an audience should listen to a speaker.
• Discuss how you can build your credibility during a speech.
• Understand how to write a clear thesis statement.
• Design an effective preview of your speech’s content for your audience.

Erin Brown-John – puzzle – CC BY-NC 2.0.

Once you have captured your audience’s attention, it’s important to make the rest of your introduction interesting, and use it to lay out the rest of the speech. In this section, we are going to explore the five remaining parts of an effective introduction: linking to your topic, reasons to listen, stating credibility, thesis statement, and preview.

Link to Topic

After the attention-getter, the second major part of an introduction is called the link to topic. The link to topic is the shortest part of an introduction and occurs when a speaker demonstrates how an attention-getting device relates to the topic of a speech. Often the attention-getter and the link to topic are very clear. For example, if you look at the attention-getting device example under historical reference above, you’ll see that the first sentence brings up the history of the Vietnam War and then shows us how that war can help us understand the Iraq War. In this case, the attention-getter clearly flows directly to the topic. However, some attention-getters need further explanation to get to the topic of the speech. For example, both of the anecdote examples (the girl falling into the manhole while texting and the boy and the filberts) need further explanation to connect clearly to the speech topic (i.e., problems of multitasking in today’s society).

Let’s look at the first anecdote example to demonstrate how we could go from the attention-getter to the topic.

In July 2009, a high school girl named Alexa Longueira was walking along a main boulevard near her home on Staten Island, New York, typing in a message on her cell phone. Not paying attention to the world around her, she took a step and fell right into an open manhole. This anecdote illustrates the problem that many people are facing in today’s world. We are so wired into our technology that we forget to see what’s going on around us—like a big hole in front of us.

In this example, the third sentence here explains that the attention-getter was an anecdote that illustrates a real issue. The fourth sentence then introduces the actual topic of the speech.

Let’s now examine how we can make the transition from the parable or fable attention-getter to the topic:

The ancient Greek writer Aesop told a fable about a boy who put his hand into a pitcher of filberts. The boy grabbed as many of the delicious nuts as he possibly could. But when he tried to pull them out, his hand wouldn’t fit through the neck of the pitcher because he was grasping so many filberts. Instead of dropping some of them so that his hand would fit, he burst into tears and cried about his predicament. The moral of the story? “Don’t try to do too much at once.” In today’s world, many of us are us are just like the boy putting his hand into the pitcher. We are constantly trying to grab so much or do so much that it prevents us from accomplishing our goals. I would like to show you three simple techniques to manage your time so that you don’t try to pull too many filberts from your pitcher.

In this example, we added three new sentences to the attention-getter to connect it to the speech topic.

Reasons to Listen

Once you have linked an attention-getter to the topic of your speech, you need to explain to your audience why your topic is important. We call this the “why should I care?” part of your speech because it tells your audience why the topic is directly important to them. Sometimes you can include the significance of your topic in the same sentence as your link to the topic, but other times you may need to spell out in one or two sentences why your specific topic is important.

People in today’s world are very busy, and they do not like their time wasted. Nothing is worse than having to sit through a speech that has nothing to do with you. Imagine sitting through a speech about a new software package you don’t own and you will never hear of again. How would you react to the speaker? Most of us would be pretty annoyed at having had our time wasted in this way. Obviously, this particular speaker didn’t do a great job of analyzing her or his audience if the audience isn’t going to use the software package—but even when speaking on a topic that is highly relevant to the audience, speakers often totally forget to explain how and why it is important.

Appearing Credible

The next part of a speech is not so much a specific “part” as an important characteristic that needs to be pervasive throughout your introduction and your entire speech. As a speaker, you want to be seen as credible (competent, trustworthy, and caring/having goodwill). As mentioned earlier in this chapter, credibility is ultimately a perception that is made by your audience. While your audience determines whether they perceive you as competent, trustworthy, and caring/having goodwill, there are some strategies you can employ to make yourself appear more credible.

First, to make yourself appear competent, you can either clearly explain to your audience why you are competent about a given subject or demonstrate your competence by showing that you have thoroughly researched a topic by including relevant references within your introduction. The first method of demonstrating competence—saying it directly—is only effective if you are actually a competent person on a given subject. If you are an undergraduate student and you are delivering a speech about the importance of string theory in physics, unless you are a prodigy of some kind, you are probably not a recognized expert on the subject. Conversely, if your number one hobby in life is collecting memorabilia about the Three Stooges, then you may be an expert about the Three Stooges. However, you would need to explain to your audience your passion for collecting Three Stooges memorabilia and how this has made you an expert on the topic.

If, on the other hand, you are not actually a recognized expert on a topic, you need to demonstrate that you have done your homework to become more knowledgeable than your audience about your topic. The easiest way to demonstrate your competence is through the use of appropriate references from leading thinkers and researchers on your topic. When you demonstrate to your audience that you have done your homework, they are more likely to view you as competent.

The second characteristic of credibility, trustworthiness, is a little more complicated than competence, for it ultimately relies on audience perceptions. One way to increase the likelihood that a speaker will be perceived as trustworthy is to use reputable sources. If you’re quoting Dr. John Smith, you need to explain who Dr. John Smith is so your audience will see the quotation as being more trustworthy. As speakers we can easily manipulate our sources into appearing more credible than they actually are, which would be unethical. When you are honest about your sources with your audience, they will trust you and your information more so than when you are ambiguous. The worst thing you can do is to out-and-out lie about information during your speech. Not only is lying highly unethical, but if you are caught lying, your audience will deem you untrustworthy and perceive everything you are saying as untrustworthy. Many speakers have attempted to lie to an audience because it will serve their own purposes or even because they believe their message is in their audience’s best interest, but lying is one of the fastest ways to turn off an audience and get them to distrust both the speaker and the message.

The third characteristic of credibility to establish during the introduction is the sense of caring/goodwill. While some unethical speakers can attempt to manipulate an audience’s perception that the speaker cares, ethical speakers truly do care about their audiences and have their audience’s best interests in mind while speaking. Often speakers must speak in front of audiences that may be hostile toward the speaker’s message. In these cases, it is very important for the speaker to explain that he or she really does believe her or his message is in the audience’s best interest. One way to show that you have your audience’s best interests in mind is to acknowledge disagreement from the start:

Today I’m going to talk about why I believe we should enforce stricter immigration laws in the United States. I realize that many of you will disagree with me on this topic. I used to believe that open immigration was a necessity for the United States to survive and thrive, but after researching this topic, I’ve changed my mind. While I may not change all of your minds today, I do ask that you listen with an open mind, set your personal feelings on this topic aside, and judge my arguments on their merits.

While clearly not all audience members will be open or receptive to opening their minds and listening to your arguments, by establishing that there is known disagreement, you are telling the audience that you understand their possible views and are not trying to attack their intellect or their opinions.

Thesis Statement

A thesis statement is a short, declarative sentence that states the purpose, intent, or main idea of a speech. A strong, clear thesis statement is very valuable within an introduction because it lays out the basic goal of the entire speech. We strongly believe that it is worthwhile to invest some time in framing and writing a good thesis statement. You may even want to write your thesis statement before you even begin conducting research for your speech. While you may end up rewriting your thesis statement later, having a clear idea of your purpose, intent, or main idea before you start searching for research will help you focus on the most appropriate material. To help us understand thesis statements, we will first explore their basic functions and then discuss how to write a thesis statement.

Basic Functions of a Thesis Statement

A thesis statement helps your audience by letting them know “in a nutshell” what you are going to talk about. With a good thesis statement you will fulfill four basic functions: you express your specific purpose, provide a way to organize your main points, make your research more effective, and enhance your delivery.

Express Your Specific Purpose

To orient your audience, you need to be as clear as possible about your meaning. A strong thesis will prepare your audience effectively for the points that will follow. Here are two examples:

• “Today, I want to discuss academic cheating.” (weak example)
• “Today, I will clarify exactly what plagiarism is and give examples of its different types so that you can see how it leads to a loss of creative learning interaction.” (strong example)

The weak statement will probably give the impression that you have no clear position about your topic because you haven’t said what that position is. Additionally, the term “academic cheating” can refer to many behaviors—acquiring test questions ahead of time, copying answers, changing grades, or allowing others to do your coursework—so the specific topic of the speech is still not clear to the audience.

The strong statement not only specifies plagiarism but also states your specific concern (loss of creative learning interaction).

Provide a Way to Organize Your Main Points

A thesis statement should appear, almost verbatim, toward the end of the introduction to a speech. A thesis statement helps the audience get ready to listen to the arrangement of points that follow. Many speakers say that if they can create a strong thesis sentence, the rest of the speech tends to develop with relative ease. On the other hand, when the thesis statement is not very clear, creating a speech is an uphill battle.

When your thesis statement is sufficiently clear and decisive, you will know where you stand about your topic and where you intend to go with your speech. Having a clear thesis statement is especially important if you know a great deal about your topic or you have strong feelings about it. If this is the case for you, you need to know exactly what you are planning on talking about in order to fit within specified time limitations. Knowing where you are and where you are going is the entire point in establishing a thesis statement; it makes your speech much easier to prepare and to present.

Let’s say you have a fairly strong thesis statement, and that you’ve already brainstormed a list of information that you know about the topic. Chances are your list is too long and has no focus. Using your thesis statement, you can select only the information that (1) is directly related to the thesis and (2) can be arranged in a sequence that will make sense to the audience and will support the thesis. In essence, a strong thesis statement helps you keep useful information and weed out less useful information.

Make Your Research More Effective

If you begin your research with only a general topic in mind, you run the risk of spending hours reading mountains of excellent literature about your topic. However, mountains of literature do not always make coherent speeches. You may have little or no idea of how to tie your research all together, or even whether you should tie it together. If, on the other hand, you conduct your research with a clear thesis statement in mind, you will be better able to zero in only on material that directly relates to your chosen thesis statement. Let’s look at an example that illustrates this point:

Many traffic accidents involve drivers older than fifty-five.

While this statement may be true, you could find industrial, medical, insurance literature that can drone on ad infinitum about the details of all such accidents in just one year. Instead, focusing your thesis statement will help you narrow the scope of information you will be searching for while gathering information. Here’s an example of a more focused thesis statement:

Three factors contribute to most accidents involving drivers over fifty-five years of age: failing eyesight, slower reflexes, and rapidly changing traffic conditions.

This framing is somewhat better. This thesis statement at least provides three possible main points and some keywords for your electronic catalog search. However, if you want your audience to understand the context of older people at the wheel, consider something like:

Mature drivers over fifty-five years of age must cope with more challenging driving conditions than existed only one generation ago: more traffic moving at higher speeds, the increased imperative for quick driving decisions, and rapidly changing ramp and cloverleaf systems. Because of these challenges, I want my audience to believe that drivers over the age of sixty-five should be required to pass a driving test every five years.

This framing of the thesis provides some interesting choices. First, several terms need to be defined, and these definitions might function surprisingly well in setting the tone of the speech. Your definitions of words like “generation,” “quick driving decisions,” and “cloverleaf systems” could jolt your audience out of assumptions they have taken for granted as truth.

Second, the framing of the thesis provides you with a way to describe the specific changes as they have occurred between, say, 1970 and 2010. How much, and in what ways, have the volume and speed of traffic changed? Why are quick decisions more critical now? What is a “cloverleaf,” and how does any driver deal cognitively with exiting in the direction seemingly opposite to the desired one? Questions like this, suggested by your own thesis statement, can lead to a strong, memorable speech.

Enhance Your Delivery

When your thesis is not clear to you, your listeners will be even more clueless than you are—but if you have a good clear thesis statement, your speech becomes clear to your listeners. When you stand in front of your audience presenting your introduction, you can vocally emphasize the essence of your speech, expressed as your thesis statement. Many speakers pause for a half second, lower their vocal pitch slightly, slow down a little, and deliberately present the thesis statement, the one sentence that encapsulates its purpose. When this is done effectively, the purpose, intent, or main idea of a speech is driven home for an audience.

How to Write a Thesis Statement

Now that we’ve looked at why a thesis statement is crucial in a speech, let’s switch gears and talk about how we go about writing a solid thesis statement. A thesis statement is related to the general and specific purposes of a speech as we discussed them in Chapter 6 “Finding a Purpose and Selecting a Topic” .

Choose Your Topic

The first step in writing a good thesis statement was originally discussed in Chapter 6 “Finding a Purpose and Selecting a Topic” when we discussed how to find topics. Once you have a general topic, you are ready to go to the second step of creating a thesis statement.

Narrow Your Topic

One of the hardest parts of writing a thesis statement is narrowing a speech from a broad topic to one that can be easily covered during a five- to ten-minute speech. While five to ten minutes may sound like a long time to new public speakers, the time flies by very quickly when you are speaking. You can easily run out of time if your topic is too broad. To ascertain if your topic is narrow enough for a specific time frame, ask yourself three questions.

First, is your thesis statement narrow or is it a broad overgeneralization of a topic? An overgeneralization occurs when we classify everyone in a specific group as having a specific characteristic. For example, a speaker’s thesis statement that “all members of the National Council of La Raza are militant” is an overgeneralization of all members of the organization. Furthermore, a speaker would have to correctly demonstrate that all members of the organization are militant for the thesis statement to be proven, which is a very difficult task since the National Council of La Raza consists of millions of Hispanic Americans. A more appropriate thesis related to this topic could be, “Since the creation of the National Council of La Raza [NCLR] in 1968, the NCLR has become increasingly militant in addressing the causes of Hispanics in the United States.”

The second question to ask yourself when narrowing a topic is whether your speech’s topic is one clear topic or multiple topics. A strong thesis statement consists of only a single topic. The following is an example of a thesis statement that contains too many topics: “Medical marijuana, prostitution, and gay marriage should all be legalized in the United States.” Not only are all three fairly broad, but you also have three completely unrelated topics thrown into a single thesis statement. Instead of a thesis statement that has multiple topics, limit yourself to only one topic. Here’s an example of a thesis statement examining only one topic: “Today we’re going to examine the legalization and regulation of the oldest profession in the state of Nevada.” In this case, we’re focusing our topic to how one state has handled the legalization and regulation of prostitution.

The last question a speaker should ask when making sure a topic is sufficiently narrow is whether the topic has direction. If your basic topic is too broad, you will never have a solid thesis statement or a coherent speech. For example, if you start off with the topic “Barack Obama is a role model for everyone,” what do you mean by this statement? Do you think President Obama is a role model because of his dedication to civic service? Do you think he’s a role model because he’s a good basketball player? Do you think he’s a good role model because he’s an excellent public speaker? When your topic is too broad, almost anything can become part of the topic. This ultimately leads to a lack of direction and coherence within the speech itself. To make a cleaner topic, a speaker needs to narrow her or his topic to one specific area. For example, you may want to examine why President Obama is a good speaker.

Put Your Topic into a Sentence

Once you’ve narrowed your topic to something that is reasonably manageable given the constraints placed on your speech, you can then formalize that topic as a complete sentence. For example, you could turn the topic of President Obama’s public speaking skills into the following sentence: “Because of his unique sense of lyricism and his well-developed presentational skills, President Barack Obama is a modern symbol of the power of public speaking.” Once you have a clear topic sentence, you can start tweaking the thesis statement to help set up the purpose of your speech.

Add Your Argument, Viewpoint, or Opinion

This function only applies if you are giving a speech to persuade. If your topic is informative, your job is to make sure that the thesis statement is nonargumentative and focuses on facts. For example, in the preceding thesis statement we have a couple of opinion-oriented terms that should be avoided for informative speeches: “unique sense,” “well-developed,” and “power.” All three of these terms are laced with an individual’s opinion, which is fine for a persuasive speech but not for an informative speech. For informative speeches, the goal of a thesis statement is to explain what the speech will be informing the audience about, not attempting to add the speaker’s opinion about the speech’s topic. For an informative speech, you could rewrite the thesis statement to read, “This speech is going to analyze Barack Obama’s use of lyricism in his speech, ‘A World That Stands as One,’ delivered July 2008 in Berlin.”

On the other hand, if your topic is persuasive, you want to make sure that your argument, viewpoint, or opinion is clearly indicated within the thesis statement. If you are going to argue that Barack Obama is a great speaker, then you should set up this argument within your thesis statement.

Use the Thesis Checklist

Once you have written a first draft of your thesis statement, you’re probably going to end up revising your thesis statement a number of times prior to delivering your actual speech. A thesis statement is something that is constantly tweaked until the speech is given. As your speech develops, often your thesis will need to be rewritten to whatever direction the speech itself has taken. We often start with a speech going in one direction, and find out through our research that we should have gone in a different direction. When you think you finally have a thesis statement that is good to go for your speech, take a second and make sure it adheres to the criteria shown in Table 9.1 “Thesis Checklist”

Table 9.1 Thesis Checklist

Preview of Speech

The final part of an introduction contains a preview of the major points to be covered within your speech. I’m sure we’ve all seen signs that have three cities listed on them with the mileage to reach each city. This mileage sign is an indication of what is to come. A preview works the same way. A preview foreshadows what the main body points will be in the speech. For example, to preview a speech on bullying in the workplace, one could say, “To understand the nature of bullying in the modern workplace, I will first define what workplace bullying is and the types of bullying, I will then discuss the common characteristics of both workplace bullies and their targets, and lastly, I will explore some possible solutions to workplace bullying.” In this case, each of the phrases mentioned in the preview would be a single distinct point made in the speech itself. In other words, the first major body point in this speech would examine what workplace bullying is and the types of bullying; the second major body point in this speech would discuss the common characteristics of both workplace bullies and their targets; and lastly, the third body point in this speech would explore some possible solutions to workplace bullying.

Key Takeaways

• Linking the attention-getter to the speech topic is essential so that you maintain audience attention and so that the relevance of the attention-getter is clear to your audience.
• Establishing how your speech topic is relevant and important shows the audience why they should listen to your speech.
• To be an effective speaker, you should convey all three components of credibility, competence, trustworthiness, and caring/goodwill, by the content and delivery of your introduction.
• A clear thesis statement is essential to provide structure for a speaker and clarity for an audience.
• An effective preview identifies the specific main points that will be present in the speech body.
• Make a list of the attention-getting devices you might use to give a speech on the importance of recycling. Which do you think would be most effective? Why?
• Create a thesis statement for a speech related to the topic of collegiate athletics. Make sure that your thesis statement is narrow enough to be adequately covered in a five- to six-minute speech.
• Discuss with a partner three possible body points you could utilize for the speech on the topic of volunteerism.
• Fill out the introduction worksheet to help work through your introduction for your next speech. Please make sure that you answer all the questions clearly and concisely.

Stand up, Speak out Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Parts of Speech: A Guide to Learning English Grammar

By: Author English Study Online

Posted on Last updated: December 27, 2023

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In this page, we will break down each part of speech and provide examples to help you understand their usage. We will also discuss how to identify the different parts of speech in a sentence and provide tips on how to use them correctly. Whether you are a beginner or an advanced English learner, this article will provide valuable insights into the parts of speech and improve your language skills. Let’s get started!

Table of Contents

Overview of Parts of Speech

In this section, we will provide a brief overview of the eight parts of speech in English. Understanding the parts of speech is essential for anyone learning the English language, as it enables them to construct meaningful sentences and communicate effectively.

The eight parts of speech are:

Prepositions

Conjunctions, interjections.

Each part of speech has a specific function in a sentence. For example, nouns are used to name people, places, things, or ideas, while verbs are used to describe an action or state of being. Adjectives are used to describe nouns, while adverbs are used to describe verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs.

Pronouns are used to replace nouns in a sentence, while prepositions are used to indicate the relationship between a noun or pronoun and other words in a sentence. Conjunctions are used to connect words, phrases, or clauses, while interjections are used to express emotions or feelings.

Nouns are words that represent people, places, things, or ideas. They are one of the most important parts of speech in English and are used in nearly every sentence. In this section, we will explore the different types of nouns and their functions.

Common Nouns

Common nouns are general names for people, places, or things. They are not capitalized unless they appear at the beginning of a sentence.

• Examples of common nouns include “book,” “city,” and “teacher.”

Proper Nouns

Proper nouns are specific names for people, places, or things. They are always capitalized.

• Examples of proper nouns include “Harry Potter,” “New York City,” and “Ms. Johnson.”

Abstract Nouns

Abstract nouns are names for ideas, concepts, or emotions. They are intangible and cannot be seen, heard, or touched.

• Examples of abstract nouns include “love,” “happiness,” and “freedom.”

Collective Nouns

Collective nouns are names for groups of people or things. They can be singular or plural, depending on the context.

• Examples of collective nouns include “team,” “family,” and “herd.”

In this section, we will discuss the different types of pronouns used in English grammar. Pronouns are words that replace nouns in a sentence. They help to avoid repetition and make sentences more concise.

Personal Pronouns

Personal pronouns refer to specific people or things. They can be used as the subject or object of a sentence. Here are the personal pronouns in English:

Demonstrative Pronouns

Demonstrative pronouns are used to point to specific people or things. They can be used to indicate distance or location. Here are the demonstrative pronouns in English:

Interrogative Pronouns

Interrogative pronouns are used to ask questions. They are typically used at the beginning of a sentence. Here are the interrogative pronouns in English:

Indefinite Pronouns

Indefinite pronouns refer to non-specific people or things. They can be used as the subject or object of a sentence. Here are the indefinite pronouns in English:

Verbs are one of the most important parts of speech in English. They are used to describe an action, state, or occurrence. In this section, we will cover the three types of verbs: action verbs, linking verbs, and helping verbs.

Action Verbs

Action verbs are used to describe an action that is being performed by the subject of the sentence. They can be used in the present, past, or future tense. Here are a few examples of action verbs:

Linking Verbs

Linking verbs are used to connect the subject of the sentence to a noun, pronoun, or adjective that describes it. They do not show action. Here are a few examples of linking verbs:

Helping Verbs

Helping verbs are used in conjunction with the main verb to express tense, voice, or mood. They do not have a meaning on their own. Here are a few examples of helping verbs:

In conclusion, verbs are an essential part of English grammar. Understanding the different types of verbs and how they are used in a sentence can help you communicate more effectively in both written and spoken English.

In this section, we will discuss adjectives, which are an important part of speech in English. Adjectives are words that describe or modify nouns or pronouns. They provide more information about the noun or pronoun, such as its size, shape, color, or quality.

Descriptive Adjectives

Descriptive adjectives are the most common type of adjectives. They describe the physical or observable characteristics of a noun or pronoun. For example, in the sentence “The red car is fast,” “red” is a descriptive adjective that describes the color of the car, and “fast” is another descriptive adjective that describes its speed.

Here are some examples of descriptive adjectives:

Quantitative Adjectives

Quantitative adjectives are used to describe the quantity or amount of a noun or pronoun. They answer the question “how much” or “how many.” For example, in the sentence “I have two apples,” “two” is a quantitative adjective that describes the number of apples.

Here are some examples of quantitative adjectives:

Demonstrative Adjectives

Demonstrative adjectives are used to point out or indicate a specific noun or pronoun. They answer the question “which one” or “whose.” For example, in the sentence “This book is mine,” “this” is a demonstrative adjective that indicates the specific book that belongs to the speaker.

Here are some examples of demonstrative adjectives:

In conclusion, adjectives are an important part of speech in English. They provide more information about nouns and pronouns, and they help to make our language more descriptive and precise. By understanding the different types of adjectives, we can use them effectively in our speaking and writing.

In this section, we will discuss adverbs, which are words that modify or describe verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. Adverbs give more information about the action, manner, place, time, frequency, degree, or intensity of a verb.

Adverbs of Manner

Adverbs of manner describe how an action is performed. They answer the question “how?” and usually end in “-ly”, but not always. Here are some examples:

• She sings beautifully.
• He speaks softly.
• They ran quickly.
• The dog barked loudly.

Adverbs of manner can also be formed by adding “-ly” to some adjectives. For example:

• She is a quick learner. (adjective: quick)
• He is a careful driver. (adjective: careful)

Adverbs of Place

Adverbs of place describe where an action takes place. They answer the question “where?” and usually come after the verb or object. Here are some examples:

• She looked everywhere.
• He lives nearby.
• They went outside.
• The cat hid underneath the bed.

Adverbs of Time

Adverbs of time describe when an action takes place. They answer the question “when?” and can come at the beginning, middle, or end of a sentence. Here are some examples:

• She wakes up early every day.
• He arrived yesterday.
• They will leave soon.
• The concert starts tonight.

Adverbs of time can also be used to show the duration of an action. For example:

• She studied for hours.
• He worked all day.
• They talked for a long time.

In this section, we will discuss prepositions and their usage in English. Prepositions are words that show the relationship between a noun or pronoun and other words in a sentence. They usually indicate the position or direction of the noun or pronoun in relation to other elements in the sentence.

Prepositions of Time

Prepositions of time are used to indicate when an action took place. They include words such as “at,” “in,” and “on.”

• “At” is used for specific times, such as “at 2 pm” or “at midnight.”
• “In” is used for longer periods of time, such as “in the morning” or “in October.”
• “On” is used for dates, such as “on Monday” or “on July 4th.”

Prepositions of Place

Prepositions of place are used to indicate where something is located. They include words such as “in,” “on,” and “at.”

• “In” is used for enclosed spaces, such as “in the house” or “in the car.”
• “On” is used for surfaces, such as “on the table” or “on the floor.”
• “At” is used for specific locations, such as “at the park” or “at the beach.”

Prepositions of Direction

Prepositions of direction are used to indicate movement. They include words such as “to,” “from,” and “towards.”

• “To” is used to indicate movement towards a specific destination, such as “I am going to the store.”
• “From” is used to indicate movement away from a specific location, such as “I am coming from the park.”
• “Towards” is used to indicate movement in the direction of a specific location, such as “I am walking towards the museum.”

In this section, we will discuss the different types of conjunctions and their functions in English grammar. Conjunctions are words that connect words, phrases, or clauses in a sentence. They are essential in creating complex sentences and conveying relationships between ideas.

Coordinating Conjunctions

Coordinating conjunctions join words, phrases, or clauses that are of equal importance. They are easy to remember using the mnemonic device FANBOYS: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. Here are some examples:

• I like pizza and pasta.
• She is neither tall nor short.
• He wanted to go to the beach, but it was raining.

Subordinating Conjunctions

Subordinating conjunctions connect dependent clauses to independent clauses and establish a relationship between them. They are used to show cause and effect, time, condition, and contrast. Some examples of subordinating conjunctions are:

Here are some examples:

• Because it was raining, we stayed inside.
• Although she was tired, she stayed up to finish her work.
• While I was studying, my roommate was watching TV.

Correlative Conjunctions

Correlative conjunctions are pairs of words that work together to connect words, phrases, or clauses. They are used to show a relationship between two elements. Here are some examples:

• both…and
• either…or
• neither…nor
• not only…but also
• Both my sister and I like to read.
• Either you come with us or you stay here.
• Not only was he late, but he also forgot his homework.

In conclusion, conjunctions are important in creating complex sentences and conveying relationships between ideas. By understanding the different types of conjunctions and their functions, you can improve your writing and communication skills.

In English grammar, interjections are words or phrases that express strong emotions or feelings. They are also known as exclamations and are one of the eight parts of speech in English. Interjections are grammatically independent from the words around them, and they can often be removed from a sentence or context without affecting its basic meaning.

Interjections can be used to express a wide range of emotions, including surprise, joy, anger, frustration, and pain. Some common examples of interjections include “ wow ,” “ ouch ,” “ yay ,” “ oh no ,” and “ oops .” They can be used to add emphasis to a sentence or to convey a particular tone or mood.

It is important to note that interjections do not have any grammatical function in a sentence. They are not nouns, verbs, adjectives, or any other part of speech. Instead, they simply stand alone as a way to express emotion.

When using interjections in writing, it is important to consider the context in which they are being used. While they can be a useful tool for adding emphasis or conveying emotion, they can also be overused or misused, which can detract from the overall effectiveness of the writing.

Articles/Determiners

In English grammar, articles and determiners are words that are used with nouns to provide more information about them. They help us to understand the context and meaning of a sentence.

There are three articles in the English language: “ the ,” “ a, ” and “ an. ” “The” is known as the definite article because it refers to a specific noun that has already been mentioned or is known to the reader. For example, “The cat is sleeping on the sofa.” In this sentence, “the” refers to a specific cat that has already been mentioned or is known to the reader.

“A” and “an” are known as indefinite articles because they refer to any member of a group or class of nouns. “A” is used before words that begin with a consonant sound, while “an” is used before words that begin with a vowel sound. For example, “I need a pen” and “She ate an apple.”

Determiners

Determiners are words that come before a noun to provide more information about it. They can include articles, as well as words like “ this ,” “ that ,” “ these ,” and “ those .”

In addition to these, there are other types of determiners such as possessive determiners (e.g. “my,” “your,” “his,” “her,” “its,” “our,” and “their”), demonstrative determiners (e.g. “this,” “that,” “these,” and “those”), and quantifying determiners (e.g. “some,” “any,” “many,” “few,” “several,” etc.).

Determiners can also be used with adjectives to provide more information about a noun. For example, “She ate the delicious apple” and “I saw that beautiful sunset.”

Understanding articles and determiners is crucial for mastering English grammar. By using them correctly, you can convey your thoughts and ideas more clearly and effectively.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the 8 parts of speech in English?

In English, there are eight parts of speech: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections. Each part of speech serves a different function in a sentence and helps to convey meaning.

What are some examples of different parts of speech?

Here are a few examples of different parts of speech:

• Noun: dog, cat, book, table
• Pronoun: he, she, it, they
• Verb: run, jump, sing, dance
• Adjective: happy, sad, tall, short
• Adverb: quickly, slowly, loudly, softly
• Preposition: in, on, at, under
• Conjunction: and, but, or, so
• Interjection: wow, oh, ouch, hooray

What is the difference between a noun and a verb?

A noun is a word that represents a person, place, thing, or idea. A verb is a word that represents an action, occurrence, or state of being. In other words, a noun is a subject or object in a sentence, while a verb is the action or occurrence that takes place.

What are the different types of nouns?

There are several different types of nouns, including:

• Common nouns: refer to general, non-specific people, places, things, or ideas (e.g. dog, city, book)
• Proper nouns: refer to specific people, places, things, or ideas and are always capitalized (e.g. John, Paris, The Great Gatsby )
• Concrete nouns: refer to tangible, physical objects (e.g. table, chair, car)
• Abstract nouns: refer to intangible concepts or ideas (e.g. love, happiness, freedom)
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Why learning the parts of Speech in English is essential for reaching fluency

Published: Nov 28, 2023 | By: Lucas Weaver

Are you struggling to understand English grammar? Finding it hard to create proper sentences or communicate your more advanced ideas clearly and easily? 

One of the most important building blocks for unlocking fluent communication in English is learning the parts of speech. 

We often gloss over the parts of speech in school, not realizing how essential they are as English language skills. 

But understanding nouns, verbs, adjectives, and more, forms the foundation for everything from sentence structure to punctuation to writing style.

In this blog post, I’ll cover what exactly the parts of speech are, why you need to learn them to master English, common challenges English learners face, and how my online course can help fill in any gaps in your knowledge.

What are the parts of speech?

Why are the parts of speech important, proper sentence structure, correct punctuation, more engaging writing style, improved reading comprehension, common challenges for english learners, confusing similarities , incorrect grammar, putting them together, remembering rules , repeated mistakes , how learning the parts of speech in english improves your english fluency, the neuroscience behind learning the parts of speech, how my parts of speech english course can help, take your english skills to the next level.

The main parts of speech in English are:

Nouns: 

People, places, things, and ideas. For example: teacher, Miami, pencil, education. Comprised of proper nouns and common nouns. Nouns can also be used in a noun phrase which can serve as the subject of a sentence.

Pronouns: 

Words used in place of nouns. For example: she, we, them. These can be either a personal pronoun, possessive pronoun, reflexive pronoun, indefinite pronoun, or relative pronoun.

Verbs: 

Action words, linking words, and auxiliary verbs (helping verbs). For example: run, speak, read, is.

Adjectives: 

Words that describe or modify nouns. For example: tall, boring, expensive.

Adverbs: 

Words that describe verbs, adjectives or other adverbs. Some examples of an adverb are: quickly, very, politely.

Prepositions: 

Words that link nouns to other words in a sentence. For example: on, by, with, into. Commonly used in a prepositional phrase. A preposition is commonly known as "anywhere a rabbit can go."

Conjunctions: 

Words that join phrases, clauses, and sentences together. For example: and, but, so, because. These are broken down into coordinating conjunctions, correlative conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, and others.

Interjections: 

Short exclamations to express emotion. For example: ouch, wow, uh-oh.

These building blocks allow us to construct sentences and communicate complete ideas. Without them, we would just have disorganized words and sounds with no meaning. 

Each part of speech plays a specific role. Once you understand the role of every word in a sentence, you can use grammar correctly, avoid mistakes, and understand how ideas fit together.

Learning the parts of speech also unlocks more advanced grammar and writing concepts.

For instance, as we move into a little bit more advanced English lessons about sentence structure, we will start to discuss the different types of sentences, like complex sentences, simple sentences, and compound sentences.

We'll also discuss how to identify the direct object and indirect object of a sentence. Then we'll talk about the difference between an independent clause and a dependent clause.

You'll also need to know the difference between a main verb and a helping verb when we learn things like English word order.

This might all seem like boring grammar topics now, but learning all of these building blocks will make your life so much easier when you try to speak and write fluently in English.

The order words appear in a sentence depends on their part of speech. Knowing if a word is a noun, verb, adjective, etc. allows you to structure sentences properly.

For example, English sentences often follow a subject-verb-object order. The subject is usually a noun or pronoun, the verb is an action word, and the object receives the action. Parts of speech tell you which words play those roles.

Using the right sentence structure makes your writing clear, coherent, and easy to understand.

Punctuation like periods, commas, and semicolons belong in certain places around parts of speech.

For instance, commas go between items in a list of adjectives. Periods indicate the end of a sentence containing a subject and predicate. Knowing parts of speech guides you to use punctuation correctly.

Proper punctuation makes writing flow smoothly and conveys ideas clearly.

Relying too much on one part of speech makes writing boring. Overusing nouns and verbs leads to a repetitive, unsophisticated style.

Varying your parts of speech adds flavor to your writing. Well-placed adjectives and adverbs add vivid description. A strategically used interjection can grab the reader’s attention.

Understanding parts of speech unlocks your ability to craft more engaging prose.

When reading, identifying the role each word plays as a part of speech helps you analyze the text critically.

Seeing how the author uses nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech provides deeper insight into the meaning. It allows you to discern subtleties and patterns that create a richer reading experience.

In short, parts of speech provide the essential nuts and bolts of language. Mastering them is key to improving English skills. Keep reading to learn about common challenges and how my course can help.

Here are some common problems English learners often have with parts of speech:

Some parts of speech are easily mixed up, like adjectives and adverbs. For example, learners often struggle to know when to use "quick" or "quickly." Using the wrong one changes the sentence's meaning.

Without knowing parts of speech, it's easy to use grammar the wrong way and make sentences sound awkward. You might use adjectives instead of adverbs, or put verbs in the wrong form, or mix up prepositions. This grammar confusion makes writing hard to understand.

Understanding how parts of speech connect in a sentence can be tricky. If you don't know the role each one plays, it's hard to make sentences that flow well. Knowing definitions isn't enough - you need to see how nouns, verbs, and adjectives fit together.

Many grammar rules for parts of speech must be memorized. It's not intuitive for learners when to use "a" or "an" based on the next word's sound. Or why verbs change form for third-person. Or irregular plural nouns. Learning these quirks takes repetition.

Even when you know parts of speech, some errors keep happening in speech and writing. Each language has tricky spots. Spanish speakers may mess up verb tenses, while Chinese speakers mix up prepositions. These mistakes continue until noticed and fixed.

These problems can hide your bigger ideas. That's why truly understanding parts of speech is so important for clear English communication.

Studies in language acquisition and learning show the importance of understanding the parts of speech. 

For example, a 2016 study published in the Journal of Writing Research looked at writing samples from both native English speakers and English language learners (Crossley & McNamara, 2016).

The researchers found that ELL students often lacked grammatical cohesion in their writing compared to native speakers. 

Their essays tended to jump around randomly between ideas without proper transitions. 

The authors concluded from the study that understanding how the parts of speech work together in a sentence is key to improving overall cohesion and writing quality. 

Their instruction focused specifically on how conjunctions and transition words can help English learners properly connect ideas and write more smoothly flowing texts.

This study clearly shows the value of really understanding the parts of speech for English learners. 

A deeper knowledge, not just of definitions and rules, but of how parts of speech function together to create coherent and readable sentences is a huge benefit when you want to speak and write fluent English.

Learning a new language involves developing new connections in the brain . At first, it takes a lot of effort for English learners to understand and use grammar properly.

Parts of speech like nouns, verbs, and adjectives provide an easy framework to organize words and sentences. With practice, these categories become automatic patterns the brain can access more smoothly.

For example, recognizing “book” as a noun quickly tells the brain it needs a verb to make a sentence. This basic knowledge allows the brain to search through the category of verbs when looking for a word, which then frees up energy for more complex writing tasks.

In this way, mastering the fundamentals of parts of speech makes using English more fluent and natural. The brain can rely on these building blocks to comprehend and communicate ideas better.

When you start to express longer and more advanced ideas in your writing, your brain will be able to think in patterns. Rather than just staring at a blank page, it can think in terms of subjects, verbs, and objects, rather than creating from scratch over and over. 

These patterns help the brain create more easily with less effort.

So learning parts of speech helps create stronger pathways in the brain for understanding English. They provide beginner scaffolds that, with time, support fluency and confidence using the language.

My online English course about the parts of speech breaks down parts of speech into bite-sized lessons so you can master English grammar. Here’s what the course provides:

Video lessons with explanations on each part of speech: I explain the role of each one and how to use them properly.

Plenty of relevant examples: You’ll see parts of speech used in different sentences and scenarios that are relevant to your real life so you can understand them more easily. 

Purposefully designed exercises and quizzes: I’ve personally designed a “Guided Practice” and a “Free Practice” exercise at the end of the lesson to help you actually absorb and learn the information. 

It’s one thing to just watch a video lesson in a course. It’s another thing to actually process the information so you can use it later. That’s what these exercises do.

End of lesson quiz: After you’ve completed both of the practice exercises, you’ll take a quiz to make sure you’ve mastered all the information before moving on to the next lesson. The goal is always for you to actually learn the information, not just see it once in a video.

The course curriculum is designed to help both intermediate and advanced English learners fill in any gaps in their grammar knowledge.

By the end, you’ll have a solid grasp of English parts of speech and the confidence to speak and write accurately.

Parts of speech are the building blocks that allow us to use language. Without them, we can’t construct proper sentences or communicate ideas effectively.

If you feel unsure about parts of speech, it will hold back your English abilities. Use my course to master nouns, verbs, adjectives, and more, unlocking the door to writing, reading, and speaking English confidently.

Check out the course today and take your grammar knowledge to the next level.

Lucas Weaver founded The Weaver School in 2016. He's passionate about using the latest learnings in neuroscience and education to create the best language learning experience possible for our students, so they can quickly build effective language learning habits that will last for years. Lucas is a graduate of Texas A&M University and after 7 years of living in the Netherlands, he is currently traveling through Southeast Asia while learning their languages along the way.

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Importance of the parts of speech

by Waqar (haripur,nwfp,pakistan)

What is the importance of the parts of speech? Ola's answer: Hi, That's a good question. The parts of speech are important because they show us how the words relate to each other. For example, let's take the words "hit," "Kevin" and "Brian." Now, they are just words, they don't really tell us something. But, as soon as we assign each word a role (a part of speech), and put them into a sentence, we actually get something meaningful: "Kevin hit Brian." Subject = Kevin Verb = hit Object = Brian However, if we change the role (part of speech) of a word, the meaning can become completely different: "Brian hit Kevin." Subject = Brian Verb = hit Object = Kevin So as you see, the role of the word in a sentence (which part of speech it is) actually helps to understand the sentence.

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7.2: Why Outlining and Organizing Speeches Matter

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Learning Objectives

• Outlines help maintain the speech’s focus on the thesis by allowing the speaker to test the scope of content, assess logical relationships between ideas, and evaluate the relevance of supporting ideas.
• Outlines help organize a message that the audience can understand by visually showing the balance and proportion of a speech.
• Outlines can help you deliver clear meanings by serving as the foundation for speaking notes you will use during your presentation.

Screenshot from this youtube video. .

In order for a speech to be as effective as possible, it needs to be organized into logical patterns. Information will need to be presented in a way the audience can understand. When writing speeches, we need to take careful steps to include pertinent information our audience might not know and to explain relationships that might not be evident to them. Using a standard outline format, we can make decisions about our main points, the specific information we will use to support those points, and the language we will use. Without an outline, our message is liable to lose logical integrity. Keep in mind that logic is subjective and this is another reason it's important to recognize the logical structures a specific audience might be using.

A full-sentence outline lays a strong foundation for any message. As we have seen in other chapters of this book, writing a specific purpose in clear language serves the speech writing process well. It helps frame a clear, concrete thesis statement. It helps exclude irrelevant information. It helps focus only on information that directly bears on the thesis. It reduces the amount of research that we must do. It suggests what kind of supporting evidence is needed, so less effort is expended in trying to figure out what to do next. It helps both the speaker and the audience remember the central message of the speech.

Finally, a solid full-sentence outline helps the audience understand the message because they will be able to follow the reasoning much easier. Remember that live audiences for oral communications lack the ability to “rewind” a message, so it is critically important to help the audience follow the reasoning as it reaches their ears.

Students are often reluctant to write full-sentence outlines. It’s a task too often perceived as busywork, unnecessary, time consuming, and restricted. On one hand, we understand that reluctance. But on the other hand, we find that students who carefully write a full-sentence outline show a stronger tendency to give powerful presentations of excellent messages.

Logical Relationships to Main Points

We have many choices for topics, and therefore, there are many ways our content can be logically organized. Often the main points of a speech can be arranged into a logical pattern; let’s take a look at some such patterns.

Whatever logical pattern we use, if we examine our thesis statement and then look at the three to four main points in our outline, we should easily be able to see the logical way in which they relate.

Balance and Proportion of the Speech

Part of the value of writing a full-sentence outline is the visual space we use for each of your main points. Is each main point of approximately the same importance? Does each main point have the same number of supporting points? If we find that one of our main points has eight supporting points while the others only have three each, we have two choices: either choose the best three from the eight supporting points or strengthen the authoritative support for the other two main points.

Remember that you should use the best supporting evidence you can find even if it means investing more time in your search for knowledge.

Serves as Notes during the Speech

Although we recommend writing a full-sentence outline during the speech preparation phase, speech writers should also create a shortened outline to use as notes allowing for a strong delivery. If we were to use the full-sentence outline when delivering a speech, we would do a great deal of reading, which would limit our ability to give eye contact and use gestures, hurting our connection with the audience. For this reason, we recommend writing a short-phrase outline on 4 × 6 notecards or on a single 8.5" by 11" paper to use when delivering a speech. The good news is that the main points suggest how we should prepare notecards.

The first 4 × 6 notecard can contain key words and phrases that will help with presenting the introduction. The second card can contain the first main point, together with key words and phrases to act as a map to follow while presenting. If the first main point has an exact quotation, include that on the notecard. The third notecard should be related to the second main point, the fourth card should be about the third main point, and the final notecard should be related to the conclusion. In this way, the notecards follow the very same organizational pattern as the full-sentence outline. In the next section, we will explore more fully how to create a speaking outline.

Key Takeaways

• An outline can help the speech writer stay focused on the thesis of the presentation by testing the scope of the content, examining logical relationships between topics, and checking the relevance of supporting ideas.
• An outline can help organize a message by making sure that all of the main points are well developed.
• A full-sentence outline forms the foundation for a speaking outline, which allows the speaker to connect to with the audience and be clear in presenting the message.
• In one sentence, write a clear, compelling thesis statement about each of the following topics: the effects of schoolyard bullying, the impact of alcohol on brain development, and the impact of the most recent volcano eruption in Iceland. Fully cite the sources where you verify that your thesis statements are actually true.
• Prepare a full-sentence outline for your next speech assignment. Trade outlines with a classmate and check through the outline for logical sequence of ideas, presence of credible support, proper citation, and clear organization. Give feedback to your partner on areas where he or she has done well and where the outline might be improved.
• Transfer information from your speech outline to notecards using the guidelines described above. Practice delivering your speech for a small audience (e.g., family member, group of friends or classmates) using first the outline and then the notecards. Ask the audience for feedback comparing your delivery using the two formats.

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33 Why Your Voice is the Most Important Part of Your Speech: If They Can’t Hear You It is Only a Frustrating Exercise in Lip Reading

There is no such thing as presentation talent, it is called presentation skills. -David JP Phillips, author of How to Avoid Death by PowerPoint 

Why Your Voice is the Most Important Part of Your Speech

The most important part of your delivery has to be your voice. You are not an actor in a silent film, a mime in a skit, nor a person giving lessons on lip reading. You are a presenter giving a speech.  If they can’t hear you and they can’t understand your words, then you have failed. Like any other skill, strengthening your voice takes practice, but it is time well spent. This chapter gives you reasons for why you should develop your voice and includes activities and videos to help you improve your voice.

First things first. Let’s talk about why it is important to work on your voice. If you have an attractive voice, people tend to attribute other positive characteristics to you. Research highlights that those with attractive voices are believed to be warmer, more likable, and more honest. Those with confident voices are believed to be more dominant and are perceived to be higher achievers. Strengthening your voice can help you with your speech, but it can also help you in other parts of your life. A strong voice will help you in your job interview, in meetings, and in interpersonal relationships.

This chapter is mostly made of exercises for you to try to strengthen your voice. Reading the activities will not help you, doing the activities will. As with all skills, you won’t necessarily improve with one try, it takes practice.

Warm Up Your Voice

Do a five-minute vocal warm-up.

• Loosen up and shush: Loosen up your upper body, take a deep belly breath and then say shhhh
• Tongue Trills: Descending and ascending
• Hum it Up: Hum up and hum down
• Chant: Meem, Mime, Mohm, Moom
•  Pronounce: Ma, Pa, Ta

TRY IT: Watch the video below to learn how to warm up your voice using these five steps.

Work on Clearly Articulating Words

Articulation refers to the clarity of the sounds you produce. The opposite of articulation is mumbling. Try putting a pencil in your mouth horizontally and then read your textbook out loud working on keeping your lips off of your teeth to exaggerate the sounds.

Another way to work on articulation is to do the practice drills. Here are some suggestions from Communication in the Real World .

• Say “Red Rover” ten times, overenunciating each  r .
• Say “Wilbur” ten times, overenunciating the  w  and  r .
• Say “Bumblebee” ten times, enunciating each  b .
• Say “Red-letter, yellow-letter” five times, making sure to distinctly pronounce each word.
• Say “Selfish shellfish” five times, making sure to distinctly pronounce each word.
• Say “Unique New York” five times, enunciating the  q  and  k . (To really up the challenge, try saying, “You need, unique, New York.”)

Bring Your Voice Up Front

Bring your voice from the back of your throat to inside your mouth. Practice bringing your voice forward by trying this exercise.

Say the words “coal, coal, coal.”

Now, do it again. Say the words “coal, coal, coal” as you hold one hand in front of your mouth and feel the air pushing out on your hand.  Do it several times to feel the air. Now say the words “coal, coal, coal,” but this time let it drop to the back of your throat. Notice that the air is no longer pushing on your hand.

When people have strong, energetic voices, they have their voices upfront.  When people are tired, weak, or unenergetic, they have their voices in the back of their throats. As speakers, we want to have strong energetic voices.

Now you understand what we are trying to do. Try it one more time each way: “coal, coal, coal.” This time, don’t just feel for the air difference, but also listen for the difference in sound.

Practice Regularly

When I first started doing public speaking, I practiced by reading out loud. I can remember reading the book Jaws to my sister every night before bed. I would walk around the room with the book in my hand and in my best clearly articulated, well-projected voice, I would read:

The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail. The mouth was open just enough to permit a rush of water over the gills. There was little other motion: an occasional correction of the apparently aimless course by the slight raising or lowering of a pectoral fin—as a bird changes direction by dipping one wing and lifting the other.

It is not enough to want to get better; you have to practice.  Poet Laurette Amanda Gorman struggled with speech articulation throughout her life particularly struggling with Rs and Sh’s. It took practice to have the strong voice that she uses today.  

Watch this short video and notice how she clearly articulates each word. At age 22, she is the first poet to perform at a Superbowl.

Click this link  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ejbSCjg2qo to watch (Embedding is disabled so you have to watch it on YouTube)

Practice These Phrases

Once you have your voice warmed up, voice coach Graham Williamson suggests you practice these phrases. As you speak them, try to keep an even tone and pace as if you were speaking one long word with no break in between.

1.    Many men munch many melons. 2.    Mandy made marinade in May. 3.    Major Mickey’s malt makes me merry. 4.    My mom’s marvelous modern manicure. 5.    Mervin Maclean’s mess marred my marmalade.

Magnify Your Voice

Having a strong, clear voice is important for speechmaking. The best way to learn to amplify your voice is with practice. Amplify doesn’t mean to scream, it means to use the force of your breath and the amplification provided in your mouth to make the sounds strong and clear.

Try talking to your furniture. Right now, look at a chair that you can see and say, “Hello chair.” Imagine seeing your words as rays of light traveling to the chair. Now, look out of a window or a door and see an object farther away and try it again. For example, I may look out the window and say, “Hello tree” and imagine my words traveling to the tree. Try this for various objects at varying distances.

Arguably you may feel silly doing this but trust the process and give it a try. Practice with things inside your room and outside your window. Feel the air and notice the difference.

Practice-Changing Your Volume

To practice changing the volume of your voice, Williamson suggests counting exercises. Try to do it in one breath.

1.    Count and gradually increase the loudness. 2.    Count and gradually decrease the loudness. 3.    Count and increase the loudness on every 2nd number. 4.    … on every 3rd number. 5.    … on every 4th number. 6.    … on every 5th number. The monotonous speaker not only drones along in the same volume and pitch of tone but always uses the same emphasis, the same speed, the same thoughts—or dispenses with thought altogether. Monotony: the cardinal and most common sin of the public speaker. J. Berg Esenwein, The Art of Public Speaking  

Yawn to Open Up

• Yawn a couple of times really big. Feel the back of your throat open when you are yawning.
• Now try a big yawn, as you exhale close your mouth, let out a sigh. The goal is to open your throat.
• Focus on the back of your throat opening up. Now yawn right before taking a big breath to open up the back of your throat. Relax your larynx and your head and neck muscles.

TRY IT: Watch the video below for step-by-step instructions. (Turn up your volume, the video is very quiet).

Exercise Your Vocal Folds

• Grab a straw and prepare to try this technique.
• Put the straw in your mouth, pinch your nose, and hum.

TRY IT: Watch the video below for step-by-step instructions.

Watch the video and notice how he uses pauses to give the audience time to laugh. He also uses pauses to give the audience time to anticipate what he is going to say next. In those pauses, you can tell that the audience has guessed what is going to happen by their gasps, laughs, and sighs. One person even says, “Oh, no!”

Joy is a concept that is very hard to pin down, but you know it when you see it. And I saw the joy in the eyes of my roommate. The dude is clearly excited about something.  

Advanced Vocal Training

All the activities above are for all speakers. For those of you who want to take your vocal training to the next level, watch this video to find your natural range. She references a piano keypad, so I made one available for you.

You can download a virtual piano keyboard here:  https://www.onlinepianist.com/virtual-piano

Speak With Power

Avoid uptalk.

Uptalk is where the voice goes up at the end of sentences.  To many listeners, uptalk makes the speaker sound uncertain, insecure, and annoying.  Within other circles (groups of uptalkers), the use of uptalk may signal that the speaker is “one of us.”  UK Publisher, Pearson, interviewed 700 managers on the use of uptalk and this is what they found:

• 85% thought it was a “clear indicator of insecurity.” 
• 70% found uptalk annoying.
• Of those, 50% said that uptalk would hinder the prospect of employees and interviewers.
• 44% stated that they would mark down applicants with uptalk by as much as a third.

The evidence is clear that in professional circles, uptalk can hurt your credibility. Record yourself while giving a speech and listen for uptalk. Start being aware of when you do it in everyday speech.

Avoid Filled Pauses

Um, uh, ok, like, ya know. All of these happen to even the best speakers, but they are distracting. According to one study, recording yourself and listening to your speech is one way to reduce ums. Another trick is to replace the filler word with the word “period” or “pause” in your everyday speech to help your filler awareness.

Why do we use filler words? We use filler words because we are afraid of silence and pauses. As an advanced speaker, you should begin to think of pauses as a purposeful thing you do for emphasis. Eliminating those “ums” will make you sound more organized and confident.

Public speaking instructor Cathy Hollingsworth emphasizes that speeches need to “start with real words” (not ok, um, or so). In her classes, she even gives students a do-over and allows them to restart if they begin with a filler (but only if they catch it themselves).

Watch this fun slam poem by the teacher and poet Taylor Mali on that trouble with filler words.

Occupational Voice Users Often Abuse Their Voices.

When people think about occupational hazards, few people immediately think of voice damage but studies highlight that occupational voice users are at risk. Teachers, preachers, singers, actors, and coaches are all considered high-risk categories. Their voice damage can cause pain, it can reduce their effectiveness at their jobs, and can even result in loss of income. In 2001, it is estimated that 28 million workers experienced voice problems every day.  One in three teachers reports a financial loss due to voice problems. “School teachers report problems with their voices 60% of the time in their lifetime and 11% at any given time”, according to the Cleveland Clinic.   It may be no surprise that some coaches do a lot of yelling. In a survey of 500 soccer coaches, 28% reported having vocal symptoms such as coughing and hoarseness. Pastors are another group who often experience vocal abuse. Fifty-seven percent of Seventh-Day Adventists pastors who were studied experienced voice clearing and hoarseness. Even though Catholic and Pentecostal pastors use their voices differently, there was no significant difference in groups in terms of hoarseness, and 14% of those pastors studied reported the hoarseness did not clear completely and hindered work life. In summary, for many professionals, their voice is the tool of their trade and it becomes an occupational hazard to abuse their voice. 

What Occupations Experience Voice Disorders?

• Sports coaches
• Radio broadcasters
• Wind instrumentalists
• Business professional
• Fitness instructors
• Cycling instructors
• Telemarketers
• Customer service representatives
• Tour guides
• Music teachers

Unless you are a musician, actor, or speech professional, you may not have thought about how important it is to protect your voice. Everyone should protect their voice–it is precious. Learning to use your voice safely and in a confident manner can benefit you not just in your speech life. In the words of Jen Mueller, American television and radio sports broadcast journalist, “The only way you find your voice is to use it.” Now is your time to find it and use it!

Key Takeaways

Remember This!

• Having a strong voice can help you as a speaker, but it can also help you professionally.
• Do vocal exercises to improve the strength of your voice.
• Using proper air control helps your voice.
• Avoid vocal fillers and uptalk.

Please share your feedback, suggestions, corrections, and ideas.

I want to hear from you. 

Do you have an activity to include? Did you notice a typo that I should correct? Are you planning to use this as a resource and do you want me to know about it? Do you want to tell me something that really helped you?

Click here to share your feedback. 

OPTIONAL EXTRAS

Focus on varying your voice.

There are many factors in your voice you should consider when making a speech.

Watch the video below for examples of each of these.

It only takes one voice,  at the right pitch to start an avalanche. Dianna Hardy International Bestselling Author

Anderson, C. (2016). TED Talks: The official TED guide to public speaking.  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Barge, J.K. Schlueter, D. W. & Pritchard, A. (2010). The effects of nonverbal communication and gender on impression formation in opening statements. Southern Communication Journal 54 (4). https://doi.org/10.1080/10417948909372766

Benchley, P. (1974). Jaws. Ballantine Books.

Berry, D. (1990). Accuracy in social perception: Contributions of facial and vocal information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 298-307. https://doi.org/ 10.1037//0022-3514.61.2.298

Buchan, V. (1991). Make presentations with confidence. Barron’s A Business Success Guide. Barron’s Educational Series.

Burgoon, J. K. , &  Hale, J. L.   (  1988  ).  Nonverbal expectancy violations: Model elaboration and application to immediacy behaviors .  Communication Monographs , 55, 58  –  79 . https://doi.org/   10.1080/03637758809376158   

Byeon H. (2019). The risk factors related to voice disorder in teachers: A systematic review and meta-analysis. International journal of environmental research and public health ,  16 (19), 3675. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16193675

Cannon, J. (2019). Public speaking tips: Use a straw by Jimmy Canonn voice coach. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zUCkRfXamM Standard YouTube License.

Carpenter, C.J. (2012). A metanalysis and an experiment investigating the effects of speaker disfluency on persuasion. Western Journal of Communication, 76 (5). https://doi.org/10.1080/10570314.2012.662307

Childs, L. (2016). Voice care: Sorting fact from fiction. UT Southwestern Medical Center. https://utswmed.org/medblog/vocal-cords-care-qa/

Christenfeld, N., & Creager, B. (1996). Anxiety, alcohol, aphasia, and ums.  Journal of personality and social psychology, 70 (3) , 451-60. https://doi.org/ 10.1037//0022-3514.70.3.451

Clements, P. (2013). Five-minute vocal warm-up for actors and public speaking by Page Clements. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eub7MzfsbdM Standard YouTube License.

Cleveland Clinic. (2020). Ten ways to keep your voice healthy and strong. https://health.clevelandclinic.org/10-ways-to-save-your-voice/

Daily Mail.  (2014). Want a promotion? Don’t speak like an Aussie: Rising in pitch at the end of sentences makes you sound ‘insecure’ Daily Mail https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2538554/Want-promotion-Dont-speak-like-AUSSIE-Rising-pitch-end-sentences-make-sound-insecure.html

Engstrom, E.   (  1994  ).  Effects of nonfluencies on speaker’s credibility in newscast settings .  Perceptual and Motor Skills , 78, 793  –  743 . https://doi.org/ 10.2466/pms.1994.78.3.739

Esenwein, J.B. & Carnagie, D. (2015). The art of public speaking. The home correspondence school.  https://library.um.edu.mo/ebooks/b17773544.pdf

Fellman, D., & Simberg, S. (2017). Prevalence and risk factors for voice problems among soccer coaches. Journal of Voice: Official Journal of the Voice Foundation ,  31 (1), 121.e9–121.e15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2016.02.003

Gorman, A. (2021). Amanda Gorman Performs at SuperBowl LV. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8PxYIlEGMo Standard YouTube License.

Ibekwe, M.U. (2019). Hoarseness among preachers in Port Harcourt Metropolis. Otolaryngology Online Journal, 9 , 25-32. (no doi).

Lyon, A. (2017). What is uptalk? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEfMwri22SM Standard YouTube License.

Mali, T. (2012). Speak with conviction typology poem by Taylor Mali. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dp9Hb8LAgqs Standard YouTube License. 

Martins, R. H., Pereira, E. R., Hidalgo, C. B., & Tavares, E. L. (2014). Voice disorders in teachers. A review. Journal of Voice: Official Journal of the Voice Foundation ,  28 (6), 716–724. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2014.02.008

Miller, G. R. , &  Hewgill, M. A.   (  1963  ).  The effect of variations in nonfluency on audience ratings of source credibility .  Quarterly Journal of Speech , 94, 36  –  44 . https://doi.org/10.1080/00335636409382644

Montes , C.C.,  Heinicke , M.R,  Guendulain , M.A., &  Morales, E. . (2020) A component analysis of awareness training for reducing speech disfluencies.  Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 76. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaba.795

National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders Information Clearinghouse. (2021) Taking care of your voice. https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/taking-care-your-voice

Neto, F. & Silva, I. & Madeira, A. & Menezes, C. & Goncalves, L. & Navarro, L. (2009). Analysis of the vocal health of the preachers of the Seventh-Day Adventist Churches. International Archives of Otorhinolaryngology. 13.

Phyland, D., & Miles, A. (2019). Occupational voice is a work in progress: active risk management, habilitation, and rehabilitation. Current opinion in otolaryngology & head and neck surgery ,  27 (6), 439–447. https://doi.org/10.1097/MOO.0000000000000584

Jeffers, J. M., & Underwood, G. D. (1993). Enhancing presentation dynamics through voice projection.  The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing,  24 (5), 234-237.  https://doi.org/10.3928/0022-0124-19930901-11

Ramasubamanian, A. (2019). The Moth presents Ashok Ramasubamanian. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/MvyPn0FFPio Standard YouTube License. 

Sereno, K. K. , &  Hawkins, G. J.   (  1967  ).  The effects of variations in speakers’ nonfluency upon audience ratings of attitude toward the speech topic and speakers’ credibility .  Speech Monographs , 34, 58  –  64 . https://doi.org/ 10.1080/03637756709375520   

Shellenbarger, S. (2013). Is this how you really talk? Your voice affects others’ perceptions; Silencing the screech in the next cubicle. Wall Street Journal. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323735604578440851083674898

Szymanowskl, A. R., Borst, K. S., & Sataloff, R. T. (2014). Voice disorders in teachers: Examining the problem and evaluating prevention.  Journal of Singing – the Official Journal of the National Association of Teachers of Singing,  71 (2), 201-206.

Tate, A.S. (2021). Here’s what poet Amanda Gorman says about her speech and auditory issues: The only thing that can impose my is myself. Today. https://www.today.com/parents/poet-amanda-gorman-has-speech-auditory-processing-issues-t206441

Toastmasters (2011). Your speaking voice. https://toastmasterscdn.azureedge.net/medias/files/department-documents/education-documents/199-your-speaking-voice.pdf

Tomlinson, J. M. Jr., Fox Tree, J. E. (2011). Listeners’ comprehension of uptalk in spontaneous speech. Cognition 119 (1), 58–69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2010.12.005

The University of Minnesota. Communication in the real world. Creative Commons Open Resource Textbook. https://open.lib.umn.edu/communication/

Treasure, J. (2013). How to Speak so That People Want To Listen by Julliane Treasure. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_how_to_speak_so_that_people_want_to_listen Standard YouTube License.

University of Michigan Medicine. (n.d.). Maintaining vocal health. https://www.uofmhealth.org/conditions-treatments/ear-nose-throat/maintaining-vocal-health

Van Edwards, V. (2017). Can you make your voice sound better? The Science of Vocal Power. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9wvu4ukcOM Standard YouTube License.

Van Edwards, V. (2019). Five vocal warm-up exercises before meetings, speeches, and presentations by Vanessa Van Edwards. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eDcHZZn7hU Standard YouTube License.

Verdolini, K., & Ramig, L. O. (2001). Review: occupational risks for voice problems.  Logopedics, phoniatrics, vocology ,  26 (1), 37–46.

Warren, P. (2016). Uptalk- The phenomenon of rising intonation. Cambridge University Press.

Williamson, G. (2014). Voice projection exercises https://www.sltinfo.com/voice-projection-exercises/.

Weitzberg, E., & Lundberg, J. O. (2002). Humming greatly increases nasal nitric oxide.  American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine ,  166 (2), 144–145. https://doi.org/10.1164/rccm.200202-138BC

Zuckerman, M.  and Driver, R.E.  (1989). What sounds beautiful is good. The vocal attractiveness stereotype. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 13, 67-82. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00990791

Zuckerman, M.  Hodgins, H. and Miyake, K. (1990). The vocal attractiveness stereotype: Replication and elaboration.   Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 14 , 97-112. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01670437

Media Attributions

• Generation Z – Finding Its Voice © AM19 - IMF Inspired is licensed under a CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) license
• Man drinking water © Damir Spanic

Advanced Public Speaking Copyright © 2021 by Lynn Meade is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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March 2022 Update: Check out the “Why We Should Learn the Parts of Speech” comic here.

It’s a common experience: The English teacher hands out a paragraph to each student in class. The instructions at the top read Underline each common, proper, or collective noun. Or perhaps they direct students to Write a verb to complete each of the following sentences, or List the ten adjectives that appear in the following passage . Students reluctantly pick up their pencils to begin the task, and soon after someone utters the despairing phrase:

“Why do we have to know this?”

Or better yet:

“When am I ever going to use this?”

These common refrains invite us to consider why we should even spend time learning parts of speech. After all, how often are most people asked to identify nouns , pronouns , verbs , adverbs , adjectives , conjunctions , prepositions , and interjections in their daily lives? What can teachers tell students to explain why this is useful? And what can homeschool parents tell their kids when faced with the same questions?

As an English teacher who has heard these objections more than a few times, I have had to justify to students why they have to know the FANBOYS or identify linking verbs . Thus far, I’ve come up with three compelling reasons to give students as to why it’s important to learn the parts of speech.

1. You can’t make (or understand) sentences without them.

This sounds basic, right? Sentences are made of words, and all words fall into one or more of the parts of speech categories, so… duh! How does that help?

Let’s say your teacher tells you that you are using incomplete sentences, and your grades are suffering because of it. In order to improve your performance in class, you need to first understand what makes a sentence complete. So you look up the definition of a complete sentence only to find this:

A complete sentence has two basic parts: a subject and a predicate. The subject is the part of the sentence about which something is being said. The predicate is the part that says something about the subject. A simple subject is the key noun or pronoun that tells what the sentence is about. A simple predicate is the verb or verb phrase that communicates the essential idea about the subject of the sentence.

If you made it through that paragraph-long definition, you can already start to see the value of knowing your parts of speech. It is not possible to decipher what a subject is unless you know that a noun is a person, place, thing, or idea. Moreover, good luck teasing out what a predicate is if you don’t know that a verb describes an action or state of being.

And sentences are just the start of our troubles! What do we do if we’re asked to fix the passive voice in a paper or minimize our use of adverbs? This brings us to the second reason that knowing the parts of speech is, in fact, a great idea.

2. It helps you master writing techniques.

If you want to be a better writer, there are techniques you can learn to elevate your prose and dazzle your readers. However, it’s much harder to learn those techniques if you don’t know your parts of speech. A great example of this is the use of parallel structure in writing. 

What is parallel structure?

Also called parallelism, it’s the use of repeating grammatical constructions in a sentence. Parallelism is powerful because it creates unity in writing, establishes a rhythm, and calls attention to our words. One famous example comes from the last sentence of the Gettysburg Address :

“… that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

What stood out to you in that sentence? I bet it was Abraham Lincoln’s use of parallelism. He used repeating prepositional phrases ( of the people, by the people, for the people ) to underscore the fragility of this newfangled form of government that privileged the people .

If Lincoln hadn’t been the masterful writer that he was, that sentence could have read something like this:

“… that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, created for them, important to preserve our country, shall not perish from the earth.”

It doesn’t have quite the same punch, does it? The problem boils down to parallel structure, and parallel structure can’t be achieved without knowing your parts of speech.

However, even if you don’t plan on becoming a celebrated speech writer, there is still one simple reason that parts of speech are worth the trouble to learn.

3. It makes writing (and life) easier.

Now, you might be thinking, “I could just look this up when I need to know it.” That’s true; you could. But is that what you really want?

Let’s step away from English for a moment and look to a math analogy to shed light on why knowing parts of speech makes life easier:

Imagine you have nine pet lions. Every day, you need to feed each lion a total of four steaks. How many steaks is that per day? 

Odds are that you quickly figured out you would need thirty-six juicy steaks each day. Perhaps you decided that it’s too expensive to own nine lions, and you’re considering just getting a dog. Regardless, you hardly needed to think about the math because you know your multiplication, or “times,” tables from elementary school. It was automatic and easy. This is why we learn our times tables: It gives us more time to set the table (for our lions).

Bad jokes aside, parts of speech are just like multiplication tables in that they are the basic units of grammar. Knowing what a verb is off the top of your head will help you identify if a sentence is incomplete because it is missing a verb; recognizing that your first two list items are nouns will help you see that you should end the list with a noun to maintain parallel structure. The more work you put in on the front end to learn your parts of speech, the less time you will put in on the back end to fix your mistakes.

Like anything else, learning parts of speech takes time and effort. To my mind, it’s worth every agonizing sentence that requires one to Write the word that is being modified by an adverb or Write the conjunction that appears in each sentence .

What do you think? Are parts of speech worth the time to learn? What do you tell your students? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Additionally, your students can always get a refresher on parts of speech and other ELA concepts on the Terms page. 

Parts of Speech

• English Grammar
• Parts of Speech

Parts of Speech - Definition, 8 Types and Examples

In the English language , every word is called a part of speech. The role a word plays in a sentence denotes what part of speech it belongs to. Explore the definition of parts of speech, the different parts of speech and examples in this article.

Table of Contents

Parts of speech definition, different parts of speech with examples.

• Sentences Examples for the 8 Parts of Speech

A Small Exercise to Check Your Understanding of Parts of Speech

Frequently asked questions on parts of speech, what is a part of speech.

Parts of speech are among the first grammar topics we learn when we are in school or when we start our English language learning process. Parts of speech can be defined as words that perform different roles in a sentence. Some parts of speech can perform the functions of other parts of speech too.

• The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary defines parts of speech as “one of the classes into which words are divided according to their grammar, such as noun, verb, adjective, etc.”
• The Cambridge Dictionary also gives a similar definition – “One of the grammatical groups into which words are divided, such as noun, verb, and adjective”.

Parts of speech include nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections.

8 Parts of Speech Definitions and Examples:

1. Nouns are words that are used to name people, places, animals, ideas and things. Nouns can be classified into two main categories: Common nouns and Proper nouns . Common nouns are generic like ball, car, stick, etc., and proper nouns are more specific like Charles, The White House, The Sun, etc.

Examples of nouns used in sentences:

• She bought a pair of shoes . (thing)
• I have a pet. (animal)
• Is this your book ? (object)
• Many people have a fear of darkness . (ideas/abstract nouns)
• He is my brother . (person)
• This is my school . (place)

Also, explore Singular Nouns and Plural Nouns .

2. Pronouns are words that are used to substitute a noun in a sentence. There are different types of pronouns. Some of them are reflexive pronouns, possessive pronouns , relative pronouns and indefinite pronouns . I, he, she, it, them, his, yours, anyone, nobody, who, etc., are some of the pronouns.

Examples of pronouns used in sentences:

• I reached home at six in the evening. (1st person singular pronoun)
• Did someone see a red bag on the counter? (Indefinite pronoun)
• Is this the boy who won the first prize? (Relative pronoun)
• That is my mom. (Possessive pronoun)
• I hurt myself yesterday when we were playing cricket. (Reflexive pronoun)

3. Verbs are words that denote an action that is being performed by the noun or the subject in a sentence. They are also called action words. Some examples of verbs are read, sit, run, pick, garnish, come, pitch, etc.

Examples of verbs used in sentences:

• She plays cricket every day.
• Darshana and Arul are going to the movies.
• My friends visited me last week.
• Did you have your breakfast?
• My name is Meenakshi Kishore.

4. Adverbs are words that are used to provide more information about verbs, adjectives and other adverbs used in a sentence. There are five main types of adverbs namely, adverbs of manner , adverbs of degree , adverbs of frequency , adverbs of time and adverbs of place . Some examples of adverbs are today, quickly, randomly, early, 10 a.m. etc.

Examples of adverbs used in sentences:

• Did you come here to buy an umbrella? (Adverb of place)
• I did not go to school yesterday as I was sick. (Adverb of time)
• Savio reads the newspaper everyday . (Adverb of frequency)
• Can you please come quickly ? (Adverb of manner)
• Tony was so sleepy that he could hardly keep his eyes open during the meeting. (Adverb of degree)

5. Adjectives are words that are used to describe or provide more information about the noun or the subject in a sentence. Some examples of adjectives include good, ugly, quick, beautiful, late, etc.

Examples of adjectives used in sentences:

• The place we visited yesterday was serene .
• Did you see how big that dog was?
• The weather is pleasant today.
• The red dress you wore on your birthday was lovely.
• My brother had only one chapati for breakfast.

6. Prepositions are words that are used to link one part of the sentence to another. Prepositions show the position of the object or subject in a sentence. Some examples of prepositions are in, out, besides, in front of, below, opposite, etc.

Examples of prepositions used in sentences:

• The teacher asked the students to draw lines on the paper so that they could write in straight lines.
• The child hid his birthday presents under his bed.
• Mom asked me to go to the store near my school.
• The thieves jumped over the wall and escaped before we could reach home.

7. Conjunctions are a part of speech that is used to connect two different parts of a sentence, phrases and clauses . Some examples of conjunctions are and, or, for, yet, although, because, not only, etc.

Examples of conjunctions used in sentences:

• Meera and Jasmine had come to my birthday party.
• Jane did not go to work as she was sick.
• Unless you work hard, you cannot score good marks.
• I have not finished my project,  yet I went out with my friends.

8. Interjections are words that are used to convey strong emotions or feelings. Some examples of interjections are oh, wow, alas, yippee, etc. It is always followed by an exclamation mark.

Examples of interjections used in sentences:

• Wow ! What a wonderful work of art.
• Alas ! That is really sad.
• Yippee ! We won the match.

Sentence Examples for the 8 Parts of Speech

• Noun – Tom lives in New York .
• Pronoun – Did she find the book she was looking for?
• Verb – I reached home.
• Adverb – The tea is too hot.
• Adjective – The movie was amazing .
• Preposition – The candle was kept under the table.
• Conjunction – I was at home all day, but I am feeling very tired.
• Interjection – Oh ! I forgot to turn off the stove.

Let us find out if you have understood the different parts of speech and their functions. Try identifying which part of speech the highlighted words belong to.

• My brother came home  late .
• I am a good girl.
• This is the book I  was looking for.
• Whoa ! This is amazing .
• The climate  in  Kodaikanal is very pleasant.
• Can you please pick up Dan and me on  your way home?

Now, let us see if you got it right. Check your answers.

• My – Pronoun, Home – Noun, Late – Adverb
• Am – Verb, Good – Adjective
• I – Pronoun, Was looking – Verb
• Whoa – Interjection, Amazing – Adjective
• Climate – Noun, In – Preposition, Kodaikanal – Noun, Very – Adverb
• And – Conjunction, On – Preposition, Your – Pronoun

What are parts of speech?

The term ‘parts of speech’ refers to words that perform different functions in a sentence  in order to give the sentence a proper meaning and structure.

How many parts of speech are there?

There are 8 parts of speech in total.

What are the 8 parts of speech?

Nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections are the 8 parts of speech.

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Definitions

• Letterpress
• Spelling Bee
• Words with friends
• Apalabrados
• Words of Wonders
• Text to speech

Parts of speech

• Numbers to words
• Phonetic spelling
• Terms of use

Modal title

What part of speech is important.

Important can be categorized as an adjective .

• 1. important is an adjective.

Inflections

• Positive Comparative Superlative
• important   more important most important
• Positive : important  
• Comparative : more important
• Superlative : most important

Adjective to adverb

• Adjective Adverb
• important importantly  
• adjective : important
• adverb : importantly  

What does important mean?

Examples of important, last searches.

• Today's news
• Reviews and deals
• Climate change
• 2024 election
• Fall allergies
• Health news
• Mental health
• Sexual health
• Family health
• So mini ways
• Unapologetically
• Buying guides

Entertainment

• How to Watch
• My watchlist
• Stock market
• Biden economy
• Personal finance
• Stocks: most active
• Stocks: gainers
• Stocks: losers
• Trending tickers
• World indices
• US Treasury bonds
• Top mutual funds
• Highest open interest
• Highest implied volatility
• Currency converter
• Basic materials
• Communication services
• Consumer cyclical
• Consumer defensive
• Financial services
• Industrials
• Real estate
• Mutual funds
• Credit cards
• Credit card rates
• Balance transfer credit cards
• Business credit cards
• Cash back credit cards
• Rewards credit cards
• Travel credit cards
• Checking accounts
• Online checking accounts
• High-yield savings accounts
• Money market accounts
• Personal loans
• Student loans
• Car insurance
• Home buying
• Options pit
• Investment ideas
• Research reports
• Fantasy football
• Pro Pick 'Em
• College Pick 'Em
• Fantasy baseball
• Fantasy hockey
• Fantasy basketball
• Download the app
• Daily fantasy
• Scores and schedules
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Jake Tapper asks Eric Adams whether it is protected free speech when a pro-Gaza protester at Columbia praises Hamas.

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New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) on Monday was asked what is the line between free speech and hate speech during protests at Columbia University over the Israel-Hamas war.

“I've seen video of somebody at the Gaza encampment at Columbia standing up and talking about how great the October 7th Hamas attacks on Israel was and calling the Hamas terrorists, calling them ‘freedom fighters.’ Is that hate speech or is that protected free speech? Where do you come down on that?” CNN anchor Jake Tapper asked Adams during an interview.

“Believe it or not, as vile as it could be — because Hamas should be destroyed from the actions they did on October 7th and other actions — but that does not fall into a crime,” Adams said. “If someone makes a comment that they want to join a terrorist organization, that's going to come under investigation.”

The tensions around on-campus protests and encampments by pro-Palestinian demonstrators, including at Columbia and Yale University, have recently reached fever pitch — even prompting classes at Columbia to go virtual Monday. Several New York lawmakers also visited the Manhattan campus in solidarity with Jewish students who have felt threatened or intimidated at school.

No violence has been reported related to the encampment, and police officers are stationed outside the campus gates as pro-Israel and pro-Palestine protesters face off. Police officers were called onto the campus to clear out a previous encampment last week. Adams said he would order the NYPD onto the private campus grounds if there was an “ imminent threat or danger to someone .”

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Congress seems poised to pass potential TikTok ban in US. How would it work?

The measure sailed through the House as part of a foreign aid package.

A potential ban of TikTok in the United States sailed through the House of Representatives over the weekend as part of a $95 billion foreign aid package that garnered bipartisan support.

The social media crackdown may stand poised to become law, since President Joe Biden has vowed to sign it if it passes the Senate and reaches his desk.

​​The TikTok measure could still be removed from the foreign aid legislation in the Senate, but that would require the entire package to be sent back to the House for another vote -- at the same time that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have stressed urgency for acting on the additional money for Ukraine and Israel.

If enacted, the measure would force a sale of the popular social media app by its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. In the absence of a sale, the app would be banned .

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TikTok did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for comment. In a previous statement, TikTok slammed the renewed efforts behind divestment.

"It is unfortunate that the House of Representatives is using the cover of important foreign and humanitarian assistance to once again jam through a ban bill that would trample the free speech rights of 170 million Americans, devastate 7 million businesses, and shutter a platform that contributes $24 billion to the U.S. economy, annually," the platform said.

Here's what to know about whether the ban would ever take effect, what it means for users and how people may seek to bypass it:

Will TikTok ultimately get banned?

Even if the measure becomes law, TikTok may still avoid a ban.

ByteDance could opt to sell TikTok, ensuring the continued availability of the app for U.S. users. The bill passed in the House grants ByteDance nine months to sell, with the potential for a three-month extension.

Regardless of a possible sale, the measure would likely elicit a legal challenge on First Amendment grounds that could nullify the law entirely, according to experts.

TikTok and its users could challenge the law as an infringement upon constitutionally protected freedom of speech, Anupam Chander, a professor of law and technology at Georgetown University, previously told ABC News. In opposition, the U.S. government would likely argue that national security concerns should outweigh First Amendment protections, Chander said.

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Last May, TikTok sued Montana in federal court over a ban of the app enacted by the state, saying the law violated the First Amendment rights of users. Months later, in November, a federal judge ruled in favor of TikTok and blocked the law before it took effect.

However, the measure in Montana may offer little insight into the legal outcome of a federal ban, Sarah Kreps, director of Cornell University's Tech Policy Institute, told ABC News. In Montana, lawmakers banned TikTok on privacy and child safety grounds, while the federal statute draws on national security considerations.

"This is apples and oranges," Kreps said.

Still, if the U.S. enacts a law banning TikTok, a federal judge may order a temporary pause while the legal challenge makes its way through the court system due to the wide-reaching ramifications of such a measure.

How would a potential ban work?

The measure would ban TikTok by removing it from U.S. app stores, including popular platforms on iPhone and Android.

New customers would be unable to download the app, while current users would lose access to vital updates, experts told ABC News.

"Users can still keep the app on their mobile devices, but they won't be able to get the updates and eventually it's going to become outdated," Qi Liao, a professor of computer science at Central Michigan University, told ABC News.

Users may be able to use the app for up to one year after the ban goes into effect, Liao added, but the app would deteriorate and eventually become inoperable.

The potential decline of the app, Kreps said, would amount to a "slow fizzle."

"The reasons why people have wanted to use TikTok are that it's easy, it's fun, it has a nice user interface," Kreps added. "Without updates over time, it would not have those same qualities that users have liked."

Will users find ways to get around the ban?

Some users would likely be able to circumvent the ban, but it would prove too difficult or inconvenient for many, experts said.

"For the majority of people, it will be lots of trouble," Liao said. "For someone who is tech-savvy and motivated, they can do it."

For instance, individuals could pursue offline app installation that bypasses the app store, Liao said. To do this, he added, an individual could download an installation package from the internet, move it to a USB drive and transfer it to their phone.

Individuals could also use a Virtual Private Network, or VPN, which allows one to pose as a user logging on from a location abroad, thereby circumventing the U.S.-specific ban, experts said.

Some users would circumvent the ban but over time, the difficulty and annoyance would likely drive them to a competing service, Kreps said.

"It's not going to be an on/off switch," she added. "But people will prefer the path of least resistance."

ABC News' Lauren Peller, Alex Ederson and Jay O'Brien contributed to this report.

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USC cancels appearance by director Jon Chu, others amid valedictorian controversy

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USC called off an appearance from director Jon M. Chu and other commencement honorees in the wake of growing controversy over its decision to cancel valedictorian Asna Tabassum’s graduation speech amid security concerns, the university announced Friday .

In a letter posted on its website, the university wrote that “given the highly publicized circumstances surrounding our main-stage commencement program,” it made the decision to “release our outside speakers and honorees from attending this year’s ceremony.”

“We’ve been talking to this exceptional group and hope to confer these honorary degrees at a future commencement or other academic ceremonies,” the unsigned letter said.

USC valedictorian’s grad speech is canceled: ‘The university has betrayed me’

Asna Tabassum was selected as USC valedictorian and offered a slot to speak at graduation. The university canceled her speech after pro-Israel groups criticized her Instagram.

April 16, 2024

In March, the university announced that Chu, a USC alumnus and director of “Crazy Rich Asians,” would deliver the May 10 commencement speech at its main ceremony, which draws over 65,000 attendees.

Along with Chu, tennis legend Billie Jean King, National Endowment for the Arts Chair Maria Rosario Jackson and National Academy of Sciences President Marcia McNutt were set to receive honorary degrees.

King will still be the keynote speaker for the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism’s satellite ceremony.

The university cited unspecified security threats in canceling the traditional valedictorian speech by Tabassum after pro-Israel groups launched a campaign against her because she posted a link on Instagram to a pro-Palestinian website criticizing Israel. The link contained content the groups considered antisemitic.

But in Friday’s round of cancellations, USC did not indicate there was any safety issue. Instead, it said it wanted to “keep the focus on our graduates.” There did not appear to be wide backlash against Chu, King or others.

USC declined to offer an interview about the unraveling commencement with President Carol Folt, who a representative earlier this week said had the “final decision” on the Tabassum cancellation and security matters.

Erroll Southers, the university’s associate senior vice president of safety and risk assurance, also declined to comment Friday.

Representatives for Chu and King did not respond to requests for comment. Jackson did not reply to a phone call and text message. McNutt did not reply to an email.

On Friday afternoon, graduating seniors posed for photos in their caps and gowns by the Tommy Trojan statue in the center of campus as other students walked about. Many said they were surprised and confused by the news.

Franco Gutierrez, a USC junior, called the move “awful” and “heartbreaking.”

“I didn’t think that is how they’d respond to the protest,” Gutierrez said.

“It’s ridiculous,” said a recent graduate — who did not give her name — as she walked on campus with enrolled students.

Christina Dunbar-Hester, a professor of communication, said in an email that “administrators have already embarrassed USC considerably and they owe Asna and the entire campus community an apology.”

“Many including myself are hoping to hear a fuller explication (including details about security concerns) and a path forward from our President, Carol Folt,” said Dunbar-Hester, who is the acting president of the American Assn. of University Professors USC chapter.

Friday’s move capped a week of intense debate over USC’s cancellation of Tabassum’s speech that included a campus protest that hundreds attended Thursday and criticism of USC by civil rights groups and politicians, including Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

The saga began Monday, when USC Provost Andrew T. Guzman released a campus-wide letter citing unnamed threats that poured in shortly after the university announced Tabassum as valedictorian and scheduled speaker. Guzman said attacks against the student had reached an “alarming tenor” and “escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement.”

The complaints focused on a link on Tabassum’s Instagram profile to a pro-Palestinian website that said, “Zionism is a racist settler-colonialist ideology,” and “One Palestinian state would mean Palestinian liberation and the complete abolishment of the state of Israel” so that “both Arabs and Jews can live together.”

Guzman did not indicate what the threats were or against whom they were directed. A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department, Capt. Kelly Muniz, told The Times the agency had no crime reports regarding violent threats targeting Tabassum or the commencement ceremony.

Speaking to The Times on Tuesday, Tabassum defended herself and said she is not antisemitic. She said she supports the pro-Palestinian cause that has grown at college campuses since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, which the Israeli government says killed 1,200 people and took about 240 hostages, before Israel’s retaliatory war in the Gaza Strip. Gaza health authorities say the war has killed about 34,000 Palestinians. According to the United Nations, 2 million Gazans are in near-famine conditions.

Did USC set ‘very bad precedent’ by canceling valedictorian speech over safety threats?

Campus administrators nationwide struggle to uphold principles of free expression amid pressure from those who claim speech, or potential speech, can subject students to harm.

April 18, 2024

“The university has betrayed me and caved in to a campaign of hatred,” Tabassum said.

On Friday, Tabassum — who still plans to attend graduation — declined to comment on the additional cancellations.

Times staff writer Matt Hamilton contributed to this report.

More to Read

USC students protest the ‘silencing’ of valedictorian with cancellation of speech

Letters to the Editor: Canceled valedictorian speech is another self-inflicted black eye for USC

‘Let her speak!’ USC campus reels after valedictorian’s speech is canceled

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Angie Orellana Hernandez is a 2023-24 reporting fellow at the Los Angeles Times. She previously worked at The Times as an arts and entertainment intern. She graduated from USC, where she studied journalism and Spanish. Prior to joining The Times, she covered entertainment, as well as human interest, legal and crime stories at E! News. Her writing can also be found in USA Today, the Boston Globe, CNN and KCRA3.

Jaweed Kaleem is a national correspondent at the Los Angeles Times. Based in L.A. with a focus on issues outside of California, he has traveled to dozens of states to cover news and deeply reported features on the complexity of the American experience. His articles frequently explore race, religion, politics, social debates and polarized society. Kaleem was previously based in London, where he was a lead news writer on Russia’s war on Ukraine and spearheaded European coverage for the Times, including the Global California initiative. Before joining The Times in 2016, he reported on religion for HuffPost and the Miami Herald, where he was a member of a Pulitzer Prize finalist team recognized for coverage of Haiti. His reporting has also received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Society for Features Journalism, the Asian American Journalists Assn., the South Asian Journalists Assn. and the National Headliner Awards.

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Mourning a philosophical giant —

Daniel dennett, philosophical giant who championed “naturalism,” dead at 82, part of the "new atheist" movement, best known for work on consciousness, free will..

Jennifer Ouellette - Apr 19, 2024 11:45 pm UTC

World-renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett, who championed controversial takes on consciousness and free will among other mind-bending subjects, died today at the age of 82.

( Full disclosure: This loss is personal. Dennett was our friend and a colleague of my spouse, Sean Carroll . Sean and I have many fond memories of shared meals and stimulating conversations on an enormous range of topics with Dan over the years. He was a true original and will be greatly missed .)

Stunned reactions to Dennett's unexpected passing began proliferating on social media shortly after the news broke. "Wrenching news. He's been a great friend and incredible inspiration for me throughout my career," the Santa Fe Institute's Melanie Mitchell, author of Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans , wrote on X . "I will miss him enormously."

"He was a towering figure in philosophy and in particular in the philosophy of AI," roboticist Rodney Brooks (MIT, emeritus) wrote on X , bemoaning that he'd never replied to Dennett's last email from 30 days ago. "Now we have only memories of him."

A 2017 New Yorker profile described Dennett as "a cross between Darwin and Santa Claus," with "a fluffy white beard and a round belly." That jolly appearance was accompanied by an intellectual ferocity—generously embellished with his sparkling wit—as he battled such luminaries as Stephen J. Gould, John Searle, Noam Chomsky, David Chalmers, Roger Penrose, and Richard Lewontin, among others, over consciousness and evolution, free will, AI, religion, and many other topics.

Dennett's many books, while dense, nonetheless sold very well and were hugely influential, and he was a distinguished speaker in great demand. His 2003 TED talk, " The Illusion of Consciousness ," garnered more than 4 million views. While he gained particular prominence as a leader of the " New Atheist " movement of the early 2000s—colorfully dubbed one of the " Four Horsemen of New Atheism " alongside Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris—that was never his primary focus, merely a natural extension of his more central philosophical concerns.

David Wallace, physicist and philosopher of physics at the University of Pittsburgh, offered Ars Technica this succinct summation of Dennett's extraordinary influence:

To me, Dan Dennett exemplified what it means to do philosophy in an age of science. He once said that there was no such thing as philosophy-free science, only science that didn’t interrogate its philosophical assumptions; equally, he saw more deeply than almost anyone that the deepest traditional questions of philosophy, from free will to consciousness to metaphysics, were irreversibly transformed by modern science, most especially by natural selection. His approach, as much as his own towering contributions, has inspired generations of philosophers, far beyond cognitive science and the philosophy of mind (his ideas have been influential in the interpretation of quantum theory, for instance). He was one of the great philosophers of the last century, and one of the very few whose work has been transformative outside academic philosophy.

"Dan Dennett was the embodiment of a natural philosopher—someone who was brilliant at the careful conceptual analysis that characterizes the best philosophy, while caring deeply about what science has to teach us about the natural world," Johns Hopkins University physicist and philosopher Sean Carroll told Ars. "At the same time, he was the model of a publicly engaged academic, someone who wrote substantive books that anyone could read and who had a real impact on the wider world. People like that are incredibly rare and precious, and his passing is a real loss."

Born in Boston in 1942, Dennett's father was a professor of Islamic history who became a secret agent for the OSS during World War II, posing as a cultural attaché at the American Embassy in Beirut. Dennett spent his early childhood there until his father was killed in a plane crash while on a mission to Ethiopia. Dennett, his mother, and two sisters returned to Boston after that, and his family assumed he would attend Harvard just like his late father. But after graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, Dennett opted to attend Wesleyan University instead—at least until he came across Harvard logician and philosopher W.V.O. Quine 's 1963 treatise, From a Logical Point of View .

Dennett ended up transferring to Harvard to study under Quine and become a philosopher, initially intent on proving Quine wrong. By the time he was a graduate student at Oxford University, he was known among his fellow students as "the village Quinean." In his 2023 memoir, I've Been Thinking , Dennett traced his interest in applying his field to questions of science to this period. He recalled experiencing the universal sensation of one's hand falling asleep and feeling like an alien thing, rather than part of one's own body. He wondered what was going on in the body and the brain to create that sensation.

"The other philosophers, though, that’s not philosophy. I said, well, it should be," he told Tufts Now last year. "So I started learning. I didn’t even know what a neuron was back then in the early ’60s, but I soon learned. I was lucky to get in on the ground floor of cognitive neuroscience. Some of the early pioneers in that field were my heroes and mentors and friends."

Dennett's first academic position was at the University of California, Irvine, and a revised version of his doctoral thesis became his first book: 1969's Content and Consciousness . He moved to Tufts University in 1971, where he remained for the rest of his career. One of Dennett's earliest collaborators was Douglas Hofstadter, author of the bestselling Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid , who called Dennett "a lodestar in my life" in an email [quoted with permission] to colleagues after hearing of the latter's death:

Dan was a deep thinker about what it is to be human. Quite early on, he arrived at what many would see as shocking conclusions about consciousness (essentially that it is just an emergent effect of physical interactions of tiny inanimate components), and from then on, he was a dead-set opponent of dualism (the idea that there is an ethereal nonphysical elixir called “consciousness”, over and above the physical events taking place in the enormously complex substrate of a human or animal brain, and perhaps that of a silicon network as well). Dan thus totally rejected the notion of “qualia” (pure sensations of such things as colors, tastes, and so forth), and his arguments against the mystique of qualia were subtle but very cogent.

Dennett was a confirmed compatibilist on the fiercely debated subject of free will, meaning that he saw no conflict between philosophical determinism and free will. "Our only notable divergence was on the question of free will, which Dan maintained exists, in some sense of 'free,' whereas I just agreed that 'will' exists, but maintained that there is no freedom in it," Hoftstadter recalled.

Johns Hopkins philosopher Jenann Ismael recalled corresponding with Dennett after her own book on free will, How Physics Makes Us Free, was published in 2016. She had not yet met Dennett, but his work was naturally a significant influence, even though her book was largely critical of his stance on the subject. Ismael opened her book by discussing Dennett's fictional short story, " Where Am I? ", calling it "the best of piece of philosophical fiction ever written." (Check out this short film based on the story, starring Dennett himself uttering such immortal lines as, "They made a sparkling new vat for my brain.")

Dennett read her book and emailed Ismael with a few notes—not about how he felt she'd misrepresented his views (which he deemed of "no matter") but correcting her mistakes about the plot of his short story. "It turns out I got the story wrong," Ismael told Ars. "I'd read it so long ago, I just embellished it in my head and embarrassingly never realized. Where I criticized him in my book, he wasn't as keen to correct me as he was excited to talk about the ideas."

She found him to be filled with infectious warmth. "It was true that he could suck the air out of a room when he entered, and even sitting at a round dinner table, he somehow became the center of it, he took possession of the discussion," said Ismael. "But he also paid close attention to people, read voraciously, listened to and heard what others were saying, taking what he could and disseminating what he learned. He had immense curiosity and he wanted to share everything that he learned or liked."

Further Reading

In his later years, Dennett wasn't shy about sounding the alarm regarding AI, even writing an article for The Atlantic last year on the topic about the dangers ahead, particularly with the advent of large language models like ChatGPT. "The most pressing problem is not that they’re going to take our jobs, not that they’re going to change warfare, but that they’re going to destroy human trust," he told Tufts Now . "They’re going to move us into a world where you can’t tell truth from falsehood. You don’t know who to trust. Trust turns out to be one of the most important features of civilization, and we are now at great risk of destroying the links of trust that have made civilization possible."

Dennett was not one to traffic in false modesty over his many accomplishments and always evinced a strong degree of self-confidence, fondly recounting in his memoir of the time fellow philosopher Don Ross wryly observed, "Dan believes modesty is a virtue to be reserved for special occasions."

His myriad interests weren't limited to the academic. Dennett loved art, music, sailing, pottery, trout fishing, windsurfing, ran his own cider press, and made his own Calvados on a Prohibition-era still. He could call a square dance, whittle a wooden walking stick, and was fond of pondering knotty philosophical questions while driving his tractor on his 200-acre farm in Blue Hill, north of Boston, which he bought in the 1970s. (He sold the farm around 2014.)

"Dan was a bon vivant , a very zesty fellow, who loved travel and hobnobbing with brilliance wherever he could find it," Hoftstadter wrote in his tribute. "In his later years, as he grew a little teetery, he proudly carried a wooden cane with him all around the world, and into it he chiseled words and images that represented the many places he visited and gave lectures at. Dan Dennett was a mensch , and his ideas on so many subjects will leave a lasting impact on the world, and his human presence has had a profound impact on those of us who were lucky enough to know him well and to count him as a friend."

Ismael recalled him sending her YouTube videos of "swing dancing and silly outfits" during the pandemic, his emails littered with colorful emojis. He was "a strange man, who didn't take himself as seriously as you might think," she said. "I really loved him, loved his spirit, his generosity, the expansiveness of his thinking, his delight in ideas, and his great good cheer. Philosophically, I think he had true greatness. It seems impossible he is gone."

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Recently arrested Morgan Wallen says he's 'not proud' of behavior

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Country music star  Morgan Wallen , who faces charges stemming in part from accusations that he threw a chair off the rooftop of a six-story bar, says he’s “not proud” of his behavior and accepts responsibility.

The “One Thing at a Time” singer responded publicly Friday night on social media to  his arrest in Nashville two weeks ago.  He faces a May 3 court date after being charged with three felony counts of reckless endangerment and one misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct, court records show.

An arrest affidavit said the chair at Chief’s bar landed about 3 feet (1 meter) from officers, who talked to witnesses and reviewed security footage. Witnesses told officers that they watched Wallen pick up a chair, throw it over the roof and laugh about it. Wallen was booked early April 8 and released.

“I didn’t feel right publicly checking in until I made amends with some folks. I’ve touched base with Nashville law enforcement, my family, and the good people at Chief’s. I’m not proud of my behavior, and I accept responsibility,” Wallen wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

Wallen, one of the biggest names in contemporary country, is currently on a stadium tour, including a concert scheduled for Saturday at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in Oxford, Mississippi.

“I have the utmost respect for the officers working every day to keep us all safe. Regarding my tour, there will be no change,” his message said, signed "-MW."

The “One Thing at a Time” album spent 16 weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 in 2023 and was the most-consumed album in the U.S. last year. Top 10 hits from the album included “Last Night,” “You Proof” and “Thinkin’ Bout Me.”

In 2021, the country singer was suspended indefinitely from his label after video surfaced of him shouting a racial slur. In 2020, he was arrested on public intoxication and disorderly conduct charges after being kicked out of Kid Rock’s bar in downtown Nashville.

The Associated Press

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Biden to Call for Tripling Tariffs on Chinese Steel Products

In a speech to union steelworkers in Pittsburgh, the president will announce several new measures meant to raise new barriers against floods of Chinese imports.

By Jim Tankersley and Nicholas Nehamas

Reporting from Washington and Scranton, Pa.

President Biden on Wednesday will call on his trade representative to more than triple some tariffs on steel and aluminum products from China, as part of a series of moves meant to help cushion American manufacturers from a surge of low-cost imports.

Speaking to the United Steelworkers Union in Pittsburgh, Mr. Biden will ask the U.S. trade representative, Katherine Tai, to increase tariffs to 25 percent on certain Chinese products that currently face tariffs of 7.5 percent — or no tariffs at all — U.S. officials said.

Mr. Biden will also announce a new trade representative investigation into China’s aggressive support for shipbuilders and other related industries, in response to a union complaint. And he will announce new initiatives to work with Mexican officials to block China from evading American steel tariffs by routing its exports through Mexico.

The moves represent an escalating effort by Mr. Biden and his aides to stop a flood of low-cost Chinese exports from undermining made-in-America products — and jeopardizing a central focus of Mr. Biden’s economic agenda.

Those exports, which often enjoy heavy subsidies from Beijing and low-cost labor, propelled the Chinese economy to higher-than-expected growth in the opening months of the year. But they have raised alarms in the United States and other nations that trade heavily with China, with leaders of those countries accusing Chinese officials of flouting international trade law and disrupting their own domestic manufacturing.

“China is simply too big to play by its own rules,” Lael Brainard, who heads Mr. Biden’s National Economic Council, told reporters.

U.S. officials have increasingly complained about China’s manufacturing overcapacity, contending that its subsidies of clean energy products and other factory goods are giving Chinese factories an unfair advantage and distorting global markets.

“With these subsidies, the amount of capacity exceeds global demand and what it’s likely to be even over the next decade,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said on Tuesday, in remarks accusing the International Monetary Fund of insufficient focus on the issue.

“When the markets weaken, prices fall and it’s our firms who go out of business, and those that are our allied countries,” she said. “Chinese firms continue to receive support so that they remain.”

The Biden administration has balanced those critiques with diplomatic outreach — and pressure. Ms. Yellen traveled to China last week for several days of meetings with leaders there. On Tuesday, according to news reports, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III talked with his Chinese counterpart for the first time in more than a year.

Late last week, Mr. Biden convened a White House security summit with the leaders of Japan and the Philippines, which was intended as a show of unity against China’s military actions in the South China Sea.

Countering China has also become a central issue in Mr. Biden’s presidential rematch with former President Donald J. Trump. Both men are pitching tariffs and other trade restrictions to factory workers, labor groups and other key voting blocs in the industrial Midwest.

“When a country just rips us off like China, then what I did is that the tariffs, and the tariffs were forcing companies back to the United States,” Mr. Trump told CNBC in March.

The tariffs Mr. Biden will propose raising on Wednesday were initially imposed by Mr. Trump when he was president. Mr. Biden’s trade representative is conducting a four-year review of those tariffs. U.S. officials have said for months that the review is nearing completion, a position they reaffirmed in a call with reporters on Tuesday.

Mr. Biden’s stop in Pittsburgh is part of a three-day swing through Pennsylvania, a crucial battleground state that he narrowly won in 2020 and has visited more than any other. The president’s campaign is hoping to mobilize support from organized labor, a traditionally Democratic constituency from which Mr. Trump has pulled some support.

On Tuesday, Mr. Biden spoke at the local union of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners in Scranton, Pa., his hometown.

He also delivered a flurry of attacks against Mr. Trump during a campaign address on taxes earlier in the day, asserting that the former president was a pawn of billionaires, not a friend of the working class, and citing his roots in Scranton.

“Donald Trump looks at the world differently than you and me,” Mr. Biden said in a speech that signaled his campaign’s intention to make the 2024 election a referendum on Mr. Trump. “He wakes up in the morning at Mar-a-Lago thinking about himself — how he can help his billionaire friends gain power and control, and force their extreme agenda on the rest of us.”

Alan Rappeport and Michael D. Shear contributed reporting.

Jim Tankersley writes about economic policy at the White House and how it affects the country and the world. He has covered the topic for more than a dozen years in Washington, with a focus on the middle class. More about Jim Tankersley

Nicholas Nehamas is a Times political reporter covering the re-election campaign of President Biden. More about Nicholas Nehamas