Grammar basics
Parts of speech
Every word in a sentence has a job. These jobs are called parts of speech. Learn the 8 jobs and English sentences become much easier to understand.
Words are like a soccer team
Every player on a soccer team has a position: striker, defender or goalie. Words are the same. Every word in a sentence has a job.
Wow, John quickly builds a big website in Bangkok, but he is tired.
In this one sentence, you can find all 8 parts of speech:
| Word | Part of speech |
|---|---|
| Wow | interjection |
| John, website, Bangkok | noun |
| he | pronoun |
| builds, is | verb |
| big, tired | adjective |
| quickly | adverb |
| in | preposition |
| but | conjunction |
The 8 parts of speech
| Part of speech | Its job | Example words | Example sentence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Noun | Names a person, place, thing or idea. | dog, Bangkok, happiness, John | John drinks milk every morning. |
| Pronoun | Takes the place of a noun. | I, you, he, she, it, they | He works hard every day. |
| Verb | Shows an action or a state. | run, is, have, build, study | She builds web apps. |
| Adjective | Describes a noun. | fast, big, delicious, local | I drive a blue car. |
| Adverb | Describes a verb, an adjective or another adverb. | quickly, very, well, softly | He speaks English fluently. |
| Preposition | Shows place, time or direction. | in, on, at, under, through | The book is on the desk. |
| Conjunction | Joins words or ideas together. | and, but, because, or, although | I like coffee, but I love tea. |
| Interjection | Shows a strong feeling. | oh, wow, ouch, hey | Wow, that code looks amazing! |
Why it matters
Put words in the right order
English has rules about word order. For example, an adjective usually comes before a noun. We say a hot drink, not a drink hot.
Learn more words at once
Many words have a family. When you learn one word, you can learn its family too:
| Word | Part of speech | Example |
|---|---|---|
| produce | verb | Thailand produces a lot of rice. |
| product | noun | This is our new product. |
| productive | adjective | I had a productive day. |
| productively | adverb | We worked productively all morning. |
Use the dictionary
Dictionaries show the part of speech next to every word. Here are the short forms you will see:
| Short form | Means |
|---|---|
| n. | noun |
| pron. | pronoun |
| v. | verb |
| adj. | adjective |
| adv. | adverb |
| prep. | preposition |
| conj. | conjunction |
| interj. | interjection |
One word, many jobs
Some words can do more than one job. Code is a noun in "I read the code" but a verb in "I code every day". Look at the word's job in the sentence, not only the word itself.