UFS 211 - ACADEMIC READING AND WRITING

TASK 6 - MECHANICS AND GRAMMAR


What is a Part of Speech?
A part of speech is a group of words that are used in a certain way. For example, "run," "jump," and "be" are all used to describe actions/states. Therefore they belong to the VERBS group.
In other words, all words in the English language are divided into eight different categories. Each category has a different role/function in the sentence.
The English parts of speech are:
Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions,conjunctions and interjections.

example:
Books are made of ink, paper, and glue.

~In this sentence, "books" is a noun, the subject of the sentence.Deborah waits patiently while Bridget books the tickets.

Here "books" is a verb, and its subject is "Bridget."We walk down the street.

~In this sentence, "walk" is a verb, and its subject is the pronoun "we."The mail carrier stood on the walk.

In this example, "walk" is a noun, which is part of a prepositional phrase describing where the mail carrier stood.The town decided to build a new jail.

~Here "jail" is a noun, which is the object of the infinitive phrase "to build."The sheriff told us that if we did not leave town immediately he would jail us.

Here "jail" is part of the compound verb "would jail."