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Skills Enhancement Program English grammar essentials: an overview Devised by Jo Killmister, Skills Enhancement Program, Newcastle Business School Revision of the parts of English speech (A strong grasp of language mechanics gives writers more creative power) Devised by Jo Killmister, Skills Enhancement Program, Newcastle Business School Nouns are things. We divide nouns into two main groups: common nouns proper nouns Common nouns describe groups or broadly identify something − e.g. girl, ships, coffee, faces, leg, sunlight, attitudes, sadness, thought. Proper nouns refer to something specific or unique – e.g. Madonna, Sydney Harbour Bridge, Toyota, Christmas, Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, New Zealand, Cate Blanchett. Nouns Devised by Jo Killmister, Skills Enhancement Program, Newcastle Business School We may also divide nouns into: concrete (desk) and abstract (knowledge) as well as into countable (songs) and uncountable (music). (These categories are important for working out whether to use an article − a, an, the − or not.) More types of nouns Devised by Jo Killmister, Skills Enhancement Program, Newcastle Business School Verbs are doing or action words – e.g. woke, eating, dressed, drive, work, crash, laughing, exist, dreamt, appear, became, invented, shout. Without a verb, a sentence is not a sentence, because something has to happen to turn a group of words into a complete idea or sentence. There are different types of verbs: regular & irregular, main & auxiliary, transitive & intransitive, finite & infinite. English verbs have twelve main tenses. These are present, past and future versions of four main types of tense: simple, continuous, perfect and perfect continuous. Verbs Devised by Jo Killmister, Skills Enhancement Program, Newcastle Business School Adjectives are describing words – e.g. chilly, beautiful, perceptive, powerful, hairy, obedient, odd, bare, tropical, scandalous, intelligent, loud. Adjectives describe nouns. They tell us more about nouns – e.g. a boring film, an obvious mistake, a lively party. Adjectives may tell us more about size, colour, quality, quantity, origin and much more. Adjectives Devised by Jo Killmister, Skills Enhancement Program, Newcastle Business School The role of adverbs is to add information to other kinds of word. They may do this in three ways: ◦ modifying a verb (e.g. The student yawned wearily over her books.) ◦ modifying an adjective (e.g. He is an extremely unlucky man.) ◦ modifying another adverb (e.g. The new items sold very quickly.) Although adverbs often end in ly, this is not always the case, as you can see above. Adverbs Devised by Jo Killmister, Skills Enhancement Program, Newcastle Business School Pronouns are useful stand-ins or substitutes for nouns and noun phrases. By using a pronoun, we can avoid having to repeat a noun in the same sentence – e.g. ‘He saw Peter in the street and ran to catch up to Peter’ could be better phrased as ‘He saw Peter in the street and ran to catch up to him.’ There are many different kinds of pronouns: personal, possessive, reflexive, demonstrative, interrogative, relative, indefinite, reciprocal. (Don’t worry about all the subgroups − more on these later!) Pronouns Devised by Jo Killmister, Skills Enhancement Program, Newcastle Business School The word the is called the definite article. It is used to refer to a specific or particular thing, as in the terrorist, the forecast rise in interest rates, the graffiti on the Hexham bridge, the highest mountain in Australia. A and an are known as the indefinite articles. These are used to refer to single instances of some general countable group – for instance, a motor car, an ice cream, a wild animal, an ostrich, a murderer, an actor. Sometimes, no article at all is necessary, as in the cases of uncountable common nouns (e.g. ‘Your coffee needs more sugar’) and abstract nouns (e.g. ‘Knowledge is the key to power.’) Definite & indefinite articles Devised by Jo Killmister, Skills Enhancement Program, Newcastle Business School There are three types of conjunctions: Coordinating conjunctions − i.e. for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so − link words, phrases and clauses of equal importance. You will hear more about them when we look at compound sentences. Subordinating conjunctions – e.g. although, because, until, while − link less important units (groups of words) to more important units to make complex sentences. They play a very important role in academic discussions through the creation of subtle relationships between ideas. Correlative conjunctions are used in pairs (e.g. either…or). They help to establish relationships between nouns and noun phrases. Conjunctions Devised by Jo Killmister, Skills Enhancement Program, Newcastle Business School Prepositions link verbs to nouns, pronouns and noun phrases in such a way that they tell us something about the relationship between them. In the process, prepositions may tell us something about space, time and reason. Here are some examples of prepositions: above, against, at, before, beneath, concerning, despite, during, outside, since. Prepositions Devised by Jo Killmister, Skills Enhancement Program, Newcastle Business School A phrase is a group of words that does not express a complete idea. A phrase is only a fragment of an idea – e.g. ‘their first meeting’. Stand-alone phrases can have a very poetic effect in fiction, but should not be used in formal academic writing. A clause contains both a subject (a thing doing something) and a verb (what is being done). Even if it is only part of a larger construction, such as a compound or complex sentence, it makes some sense on its own. It says, in simple terms, who does what. This is enough to constitute a complete idea. Phrases & clauses Devised by Jo Killmister, Skills Enhancement Program, Newcastle Business School The parts of speech we have looked at so far are all building blocks of sentences. Put simply, a sentence tells us who does what or something is something. Another way of defining a sentence is to say that a sentence is a group of words that together make up a complete unit of meaning or thought. In order for a sentence to be considered complete, it must have a subject and a predicate. Subject = who Predicate = verb (does) + object (what) Note that it is possible to create a sentence without an object – e.g. “The eagle soars”; “Harry laughed”. However, a sentence must have both a subject and a predicate which consists, at least, of a verb. In other words, at minimum, a sentence must have a subject and a verb. Sentences Devised by Jo Killmister, Skills Enhancement Program, Newcastle Business School King, G. (2000). Good Grammar. Glasgow, UK: HarperCollins. Dr Jim Jose, Associate Professor, School of Economics, Politics & Tourism, for his guidance through my reference to his Study Skills Online (2000). References Devised by Jo Killmister, Skills Enhancement Program, Newcastle Business School