Parts of Speech, Modals - Passage Practice

Clear grammatical choices are important in everyday communication because they help people express exact meanings. A student writing to a school principal may create confusion by mixing up parts of speech, as in the sentence, “Please excuse my brother because he were ill.” The wrong verb form makes the message look careless and unpolished. In a courtroom, an adjective or adverb placed incorrectly may change the meaning of a statement, so careful language is especially necessary.

Parts of speech classify words according to the jobs they perform in a sentence. A noun names a person, place, thing, or idea, while a verb shows an action or a state of being. An adjective describes a noun or pronoun, and an adverb usually describes a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. A pronoun takes the place of a noun, a preposition shows a relationship such as place, time, or direction, and a conjunction joins words or groups of words. An interjection expresses sudden feeling.

To analyse a sentence, a reader should first examine what each word does rather than depend only on its dictionary meaning. The reader should then ask whether the word names, acts, describes, joins, replaces a noun, or shows a relationship. The sentence structure must also be checked, and reading the sentence aloud can show whether it sounds complete and clear. Since a word may change its grammatical job in a different sentence, context must always be considered. This knowledge helps writers make sentences accurate, natural, and easy to understand.