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Section 2
Introducing parts
of speech
Parts of Speech
Nouns: The names of things.
Parts of speech are the building blocks of language. If we’re going to have a conversation with students about grammar - it
needs to begin with them being familiar with the names of these
nuts and bolts that they use to construct sentences.
• Concrete nouns = The names of things that have a physical existence - they can be
touched. i.e chair, carpet, floor, wall
• Abstract nouns = The names of feelings, concepts and ideas (things which cannot be
touched). i.e justice, love, goodness
• Proper nouns = The names of people, organisations, groups or places. Names which
need to be capitalised. i.e London, John, the United Nations, Australia
Verbs: The actions which nouns perform. The dog runs. The cat hides.
The eight parts of speech can be seen in the chart on the opposite page. These should be introduced or revised with students
at the start of each year.
Introducing concrete and proper nouns:
It makes sense to start teaching parts of speech by teaching
nouns. We might ask students to consider these two ‘sentences’:
Adjectives: Words which describe nouns. The shaggy dog. The fast cat.
Adverbs: Words which provide more information about how a verb is being performed. The
shaggy dog runs quickly. The fast car hides carefully.
Pronouns: Words which stand in the place of a noun: I/me, he/him, she/her, it, we/us, they/
them. He (in place of the dog) runs quickly.
Conjunctions: Words that are used to join sentences: and, but, or. The dog runs and the cat
hides.
• To the...
Prepositions: Words which show the relationship between two nouns in terms of place,
time, manner, reason or purpose: to, after, in, near, after, despite
• To the park.
Interjections: Words which express an exclamation: Hi! Oh! Cheers! Hooray! Ugh!
Neither are technically ‘correct’ sentences. But one of them we
can make ‘sense’ of. ‘To the park’ is about going to the park.
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Someone, or something is going ‘to the park.’ A sentence needs
to be about something. If this something doesn’t exist, then the
sentence doesn’t exist.
There are three different types of nouns: concrete, abstract and
proper.
Concrete and proper nouns can be introduced to students
through this activity:
1. Give each student in the class five coloured sticky notes
2. Ask them to identify five different things in the room that can
be (appropriately) touched.
3. Students are to write down the names of these five things on
five separate sticky notes.
4. Students then stick each sticky note on the thing it names.
5. Tell students that these words are called ‘concrete nouns’.
Read out examples of different concrete nouns that students
have labelled.
Afterwards, emphasise to students that we’ve done a physical
or kinesthetic activity to reinforce that idea that concrete nouns
are the names of things that we can physically touch. At this
point we can also introduce proper nouns - nouns that need to
be capitalised because they are the names of people, places or
organisations. Ask students to identify the names of things in
the room that need to be written with capital letters. They
should write these on two different sticky notes and stick the
note next to the thing that needs to be written with a capital letter.
Introducing verbs:
As a follow up to the above activity, we can give students a further five sticky notes. Sticky notes which are a different colour
to the first kind will help to visually underline the distinction between parts of speech.
1. Ask students to identify the actions that the concrete nouns
which have been labelled around the room perform. Give
them some examples. The light shines, the chair stands, the
door swings.
2. Tell students that these action words are called ‘verbs’. Students now need to identify five examples of their own and
write them on five separate sticky notes.
3. Students should then stick their sticky notes next to the labelled nouns that perform these actions.
4. Go around the room and read out some examples.
As a follow up, emphasise that nouns and verbs are the two
most important elements of a sentence. Without them, a sentence does not exist.
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Introducing Adjectives:
The sticky note activity can continue with adjectives.
1. Ask students to identify words which describe the nouns that
have been labelled in the room. Give them some examples:
the grey carpet. The hard wall. The bright light.
2. Students should write down five different words to describe
five different nouns on five separate sticky notes. Explain to
students that these ‘describing’ words are in fact called ‘adjectives.’ Students should stick the adjectives next to the nouns
they describe.
To challenge your students, you may like to give them a list of
adjectives such as this:
• complex
• unique
• loathsome
Students need to match these adjectives to a noun in the room
and then explain how the adjective describes the noun.
Introducing adverbs:
because adverbs are formed from adjectives. Adverbs tell us
about how a verb is performed: The cat ran quickly. The dog
ran slowly. I answered the question stupidly. Adverbs are frequently (but not always) formed by adding ‘-ly’ to the end of an
adjective. Slow becomes slowly, stupid becomes stupidly.
Continuing with the sticky note activity, students can look
around the room at all the adjectives that have been stuck to
the wall. They should consider each adjective and mentally add
‘-ly’ to it in their head. Does it make sense? Does it sound right?
This is an important process to go through. English is not an exact science - as English speakers we will often make an intuitive judgement about whether something sounds right. Does
the adverb friendlily sound right? Students need to learn this
process too.
On a separate coloured sticky note, students should turn two
different adjectives into adverbs by adding ‘-ly’ to the end - and
stick these next to the adjective.
As a follow up thinking activity about adverbs, student can complete this sentence:
• If adjectives describe nouns, telling us what a noun is like, an
adverb....
Adverbs can be one of the trickiest parts of speech to introduce.
It makes sense to introduce them to students after adjectives 8
Consolidating knowledge about nouns, verbs, adjectives
and adverbs
excitedly,
This short writing activity can help students consolidate their understanding of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
down onto the world.
1. Ask students to randomly identify a concrete noun in the
room.
2. Then ask students to think of at least ten adjectives to describe that noun (a thesaurus might help here).
3. Students should then go through their list of adjectives and
see which ones can be turned into adverbs by adding ‘-ly’ to
the end.
4. Students can now create an adverb poem which follows this
formula:
Adverb,
adverb,
adverb,
noun + verb
phrase.
Example:
the light shone
*Students may have trouble forming adjectives into adverbs.
This can be for two reasons. Firstly, they might think ‘it doesn’t
sound right’ (when actually it is right) - so we need to circulate
as teachers and confirm that ‘yes, it is actually right - you can
turn that into an adverb.’ The second reason is that students
may have brainstormed adverbs that can’t be formed into an adverb by adding ‘-ly.’ This can be an opportunity to talk about adverb phrases. Where an adjective, such as ‘dud’ can’t be
formed into an ‘-ly’ adverb, we need to use phrases such as in
a dud way or by dudliness or with dudliness (we turn the adjective into a noun).
Introducing abstract nouns
As noted above in the section on adverbs, English is an intuitive
language. For every rule there exists myriad exceptions - so we
need to rely on testing words: does this sound right? This is certainly the case with forming nouns. Cattiness is a noun, is dogginess? Does it sound right? Can green become greenness?
There is a large variety of noun endings:
Brightly,
erractically,
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• -tion (nation)
• -ment (government)
• -ist (florist)
• -hood (neighbourhood)
When we turn adjectives into nouns we create abstract nouns the names of feelings, ideas and concepts - things that cannot
physically be touched.
• -er (player)
• -dom (freedom)
Informal nouns
• -ness (happiness)
• -cy (hesitancy)
• -sion (division)
• -ity (charity)
One way we can get students experimenting with forming
nouns is to watch through a short film. As they watch through it
students need to note down:
‘Fest’ is not a noun ending but we use it all the time to create informal nouns: mudfest, moneyfest, nerdfest. Fest used in this
sense is an abbreviation of festival. When fest is used at the
end of a noun a compound noun has been created. Students
can do the activity below and put ‘-fest’ at the end of any noun
or compound noun they create.
• The characters in this film feel...
Introducing compounds
After they have noted down as many different ways characters
feel as they can identify, students should then have a go turning
this adjectives into nouns by experimenting with which noun
ending sounds most appropriate. Getting it right is less important than being willing to experiment.
English is a dynamic language. Students should see grammar
not as an inhibitive process of rules and regulations and correct
style - but as a language which affords the opportunity to experiment and innovate. New words enter English all the time - particularly because of technology.
At the end of this process we can ask students: What’s different
about these nouns to the concrete nouns we have previously
looked at? Students might need some additional prodding such
as: What’s different about what I can do with a concrete noun
such as a chair, and a noun such as anger?
• road rage
• car park
• light switch
• Crowd sourcing
• Media blitz
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Often these words, such as the ones above are compound
nouns - the merging of two existing nouns to create a new noun
that labels a new piece of technology or a new phenomenon
that has come about because of that technology.
Students can have a go creating their own new nouns.
1. Divide students into pairs
2. Give each pair member ten slips of paper
3. Each individual student needs to brainstorm five concrete
nouns on five separate slips of paper
4. Each individual student then needs to brainstorm five abstract nouns on five separate pieces of paper
5. The pair should then spread out their slips of paper so they
both can see all the nouns they have brainstormed.
6. Students should now create compound nouns by matching
two nouns together. Tell students: ‘we’re not trying to create
real nouns - we’re trying to create the most interesting combinations we can.’ Advise students that interesting compound
nouns can often be created by pairing an abstract noun (such
as murder) with a concrete noun (such as chips) so we get
murder chips. However, interesting nouns can also be created by pairing two concrete or two abstract nouns.
7. At the end of this, ask students to share their most interesting
creations.
Verbs can also be compounded. I trip-trapped home. I walkskipped home. I slid-skied home. As can adjectives: The bluegreen car. The spewy-smelly sock.
While compound nouns will be seen in a range of different writing, compound adjectives and verbs are usually typical to creative writing.
Introducing conjunctions
Conjunctions are the words which help us combine simple sentences into longer, more complex sentences.
• and
• but
• or
• so
Students can articulate the importance of conjunctions by having to write without them in an activity like this:
1. Divide students into groups of four
2. Students will be watching through a short film. One student
needs to look for examples of nouns, one for verbs, one for
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adjectives and one for adverbs. The group needs to work out
who will be responsible for which part of speech.
3. Give each student five slips of paper.
4. Watch through a short, narrative film such as Granny
O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty (find it on Youtube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIDv1jJhoxY). Each student needs to pick out examples of the parts of speech they
are responsible for. For example, the noun student needs to
identify the names of characters, the roles they perform, the
feelings they experience or objects that are in the film. The
verb student should identify the actions the characters or objects in the film perform etc...
5. Students should write down examples of their parts of
speech on their individual slips of paper.
6. At the conclusion of the film students need to construct a sentence. It should be the longest sentence they can create using only the words on their slips of paper. There are rules to
how they can construct their sentence:
• They can use the articles ‘the’ ‘a’ or ‘an’.
• Apart from the above words, they cannot use any additional
words.
• They can change the words to make sense in the sentence.
For example, the verb ‘jump’ might become ‘jumps’ or
‘jumped’.
• They cannot use any punctuation apart from a full stop at the
end of the sentence.
7. Write these rules on the whiteboard for all students to see.
Advise students that they may like to start the process by getting the noun student to first share his or her words by spreading them out for all to see. As the noun student does so,
other students can chip in with verbs or adjectives that could
go with the nouns or adverbs that can go with the verbs.
8. Circulate around the room as students complete this activity.
Students will break the rules in two main ways as they complete the task and will need to be reminded of the conditions
of the task:
• They will use additional words
• They will use a string of adjectives either separated by a
comma (which is not allowed) or not separated by a comma
(which is incorrect).
9. Ask students to share the longest sentence they could create
under the conditions of the task. The longest sentence they
could possibly create will only be five or six words long. After
this, ask students: ‘what words do we need to be able to use
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