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8th Grade English
Final Exam Study Guide
The following areas of grammar will be included on your English final exam. Please go back to
these lessons in your book and workbook, and review the rules and examples. There are also
”Checkup” and “Extra Practice” sections at the end of each chapter that you can do for review
and extra practice. We will review in class the week of the final.
A. The Sentence – Unit 1
a. Kinds of Sentences – Lesson 1
i. Declarative Sentence – makes a statement and ends with a period.
ii. Interrogative Sentence – asks a question and ends with a question mark.
iii. Imperative Sentence – makes a command or a request and ends with a period.
iv. Exclamatory Sentence – shows strong feeling and ends with an exclamation
point.
b. Compound Sentences – Lessons 6
i. You can combine two or more related sentences into a compound sentence.
Join the sentences with a conjunction (and, but, or, nor, for, yet). Add a
comma before the conjunction.
c. Complex Sentences – Lesson 8
i. An independent clause can stand alone.
ii. A subordinate clause cannot stand alone and usually begins with a
subordinating conjunction.
1. Subordinating conjunctions – because, when, or although
iii. A complex sentence has an independent clause and one or more subordinate
clauses.
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d. Fragments and Run-ons – Lesson 9
i. A sentence fragment is an incomplete thought.
ii. A run-on sentence strings together too many thoughts without correct
punctuation.
B. Nouns – Unit 2
a. Compound and Collective Nouns – Lesson 2
i. A compound noun is made up of two or more words.
ii. A collective noun names a group of people, animals, or things.
b. Singular and Plural Nouns – Lesson 3
i. To form the plural of most singular nouns, add –s.
ii. To form the plural of nouns ending with s, x, z, sh, or ch, add –es.
iii. Some nouns have special plural forms.
c. Possessive Nouns – Lesson 4
i. A possessive noun shows ownership.
ii. To form the possessive of a singular noun, a plural noun not ending with s,
or a compound noun, add an apostrophe and –s.
iii. To form the possessive of a plural noun ending with s, add an apostrophe
only.
C. Verbs – Unit 3
a. Irregular Verbs – Lessons 5 & 6
i. Irregular verbs do not follow any rules for forming the past and the past
participle. You must learn the principal parts of irregular verbs. See charts in
Lessons 5 & 6.
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ii. Irregular verbs to focus on: be, have, do, come, run, bring, buy, feel, lay, lead,
swing, begin, drink, ring, sing, swim, choose, drive, eat, give, go, grown, lie,
see, speak, take, write
b. Subject-Verb Agreement – Lessons 12 & 13
i. A subject and its verb must agree in number.
ii. Use a plural verb with a compound subject joined by and.
iii. Use a verb that agrees with the nearer of two subjects joined by or or not.
iv. Use a singular verb with a title or a name of a single thing, with a collective
noun referring to a whole group, and with a noun of amount.
v. Use a plural verb with a collective noun referring to the individual members
of a group and with a noun of amount when referring to the individual units.
c. lie, lay – Lesson 15
i. Use lie for “to rest or to remain.” Lie is intransitive.
1. Intransitive – An intransitive verb does not have an object. Linking
verbs are always intransitive.
2. Principal Parts:
lie
lying
lay
lain
ii. Use lay for “to put or to place.” Lay is transitive.
1. Transitive – A transitive verb expresses action that is directed toward
a word in the predicate The word to which the action is directed is the
object of the verb.
2. Principal Parts:
lay
(is) laying
laid
(has) laid
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d. affect, effect – Lesson 16
i. The verb affect means “to influence.”
ii. The verb effect means “to cause to happen.”
iii. The noun effect means “result.”
D. Modifiers – Adjectives and Adverbs – Unit 4
a. Adjectives – Lesson 1
i. An adjective describes, or modifies, a NOUN or a PRONOUN.
ii. A proper adjective is formed from a proper noun.
iii. A, an, and the are special adjectives called articles.
iv. A predicate adjective follows a linking verb and describes the subject.
b. Comparing with Adjectives – Lesson 2
i. The positive degree is the basic form of the adjective.
ii. Use the comparative degree to compare TWO things.
1. Form the comparative degree with –er or more.
iii. Use the superlative degree to compare THREE or MORE things.
1. Form the superlative degree with –est or most.
c. Adverbs – Lesson 3
i. An adverb modifies a VERB, an ADJECTIVE, or another ADVERB.
ii. An adverb tells HOW, WHEN, WHERE, or to WHAT EXTENT.
d. Adjective or Adverb – Lesson 6
i. Use GOOD, BAD, SURE, and REAL as adjectives.
ii. Use WELL, BADLY, SURELY, and REALLY as adverbs.
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iii. Use well as an adjective only when it refers to health.
E. Capitalization and Punctuation – Unit 5
a. Proper Nouns – Lesson 3
i. A proper noun begins with a capital letter.
ii. You can form proper adjectives from proper nouns.
iii. Capitalize proper adjectives.
b. Dates, Addresses, and Letters – Lesson 6
i. Use a comma to separate the month and the day from the year.
ii. Use a comma between the city and the state. Use a comma after the state if the
address is within the sentence. Use a comma to separate each item except the
Zip code.
iii. Use a comma after the greeting in FRIENDLY letters and after the closing in
both friendly and business letters.
c. Quotation Marks – Lesson 7
i. Use quotation marks to set off direct quotations from the rest of the sentence.
ii. Use quotation marks around the titles of short stories, poems, book chapters,
magazine articles, and songs.
iii. Capitalize all important words in a title.
d. Titles of Long Works – Lesson 8
i. Underline the titles of major works like books, magazines, newspapers, plays,
movies, television series, works of art, and long musical compositions.
ii. Capitalize all important words in a title.
e. Abbreviations and Numbers – Lesson 10
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i. Most abbreviations begin with a capital letter and end with a period.
ii. Spell out numbers under one hundred and numbers at the beginning of a
sentence.
iii. Use numerals for numbers over one hundred and for sections of writing.
F. Pronouns – Unit 6
a.
Personal and Possessive Pronouns – Lesson 1
i. You can replace nouns with pronouns to make your speaking and writing
flow more smoothly. (Know the pronoun charts on page 299-300.)
ii. Personal pronouns have different forms to show person, number, and gender.
1. Personal pronouns show person. A pronoun in the first person shows
who is speaking. A pronoun in the second person shows who is
being spoken to. A pronoun in the third person shows who or what
is being spoken about.
2. Personal pronouns also show number. Singular pronouns refer to one
person or thing. Plural pronouns refer to more than one.
3. Third person singular pronouns show gender. She and her are
feminine. He and him are masculine. It is neuter.
iii. Possessive pronouns show ownership. You can use possessive pronouns to
replace possessive nouns. Most possessive pronouns have two forms for each
person. DO NOT confuse possessive pronouns and contractions.
b. Pronoun Antecedents – Lesson 2
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i. The noun that the pronoun replaces is called an antecedent. An antecedent
usually goes before a pronoun and names the person, place, or thing to which
the pronoun refers.
1. Sometimes the antecedent is in an earlier sentence.
2. Sometimes the antecedent comes after the pronoun.
3. The antecedent of one pronoun may be another pronoun.
4. A pronoun must always agree with its antecedent in number and in
person. A pronoun that is third person singular must agree with its
antecedent in gender as well (his, her, it).
5. When the antecedent is two or more nouns joined by and, use a plural
pronoun.
6. When the antecedent is two or more nouns joined by or, use a pronoun
that agrees with the noun nearer the pronoun.
c. Interrogative Pronouns – Lesson 4
i. A pronoun used to form a question is called an interrogative pronoun.
1. The interrogative pronouns who, which, what, whom, and whose ask
questions. The antecedents of interrogative pronouns are the words
that answer the questions.
2. If the words which and what come directly before the nouns, they act
as adjectives, not as pronouns. It which and what stand alone, they act
as pronouns.
3. The interrogative pronoun who has different forms to reflect case
depending on how you use it in a sentence. Use who as a subject,
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whom as an object, and whose as a possessive. DO NOT confuse the
interrogative whose with the contraction who’s.
4. To help you decide whether to use who or whom, turn the question into
a statement. Substitute he or she for who, and use him or her in place
of whom to see which case is correct. (See example on page 312.)
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