The 8 parts of speech - a challenge to try

Here’s a task for your child to try to get 2024 started!

It will help your child to think about parts of speech in a sentence. It’s good for Year 5 children to try independently and as a supported challenge for Year 4.

As soon as I started to prepare this task, I wondered if this would be a welcome challenge or just a headache due to all the exceptions to grammar rules that we have in the English language! However, I’ve concluded that it’s a valuable learning task as it provides lots of discussion points about grammar.


So, here’s a word of warning: a category for a word can change depending on how/ where it is used in a sentence. So, this task is more complicated than it first appears (e.g. Can ‘think’ be a verb AND a noun?).


One way to tackle this task is first to match up the ones you know, then see what is left (the process of elimination), and then check the answers where I have put a brief explanation of the tricky words that could fall into a couple of categories.


I have explained the categories below and the answers (and your child can argue their case for putting a word into a couple of categories).

Top tip: If you need more clarification, YouTube is bursting with videos to help teach this. Type in ‘Basic English – the 8 parts of speech’ or something similar, and you’ll see what I mean!

Definitions of the main categories
English words can be classified into different parts of speech according to their part in making sentences in the language. So, in English, the main parts of speech fall into eight categories:

Nouns: A noun is the name of a person, animal, place or thing, e.g. John, tiger, school, kettle, honesty
Verbs: A verb may be said to be a ‘doing’ word, e.g., eat, think, write.
Pronouns: A pronoun is a word which takes the place of a noun, e.g. he, she, it
Adjectives: An adjective describes a noun or a pronoun, e.g., good, fine, red.
Adverbs: An adverb generally modifies a verb, e.g. quietly, here, suddenly.
Prepositions: A preposition shows the relation between one thing and another, e.g. against, for, with.
Conjunctions: A conjunction is a word used for joining words and clauses, e.g. and, but.
Exclamations/interjections: An exclamation or interjection expresses sudden emotion, e.g. Oh! Hello! Stop!

Task

Match the number with the correct part of speech. E.g. Noun = 4

Here are the parts of speech:

• Noun
• Verb
• Pronoun
• Adjective
• Adverb
• Preposition
• Conjunction
• Exclamation/interjection
  
  Here are the examples of that part of speech.

1. against
2. it
3. quietly
4. honesty
5. but
6. think
7. fine
8. Oh!
   
   

How did you do?

Answers
Noun = 4 /honesty
This is an abstract noun. ‘Honesty’ comes under an abstract noun's definition because we cannot feel, touch, and see it. It is a behaviour, not a physical attribute (e.g., ‘Honesty is really important.’). If an article precedes the abstract noun, it becomes a common noun (e.g., The honesty of the man was astonishing.)


Verb = 6 /think
This could also be a noun (e.g., ‘I am going to have a good think about it.’)


Pronoun = 2 /it
This could also be a noun if we’re talking about playing the game ‘It’ (e.g., ‘She is going to be it.’).


Adjective = 7 /fine (‘It’s a fine day.’)
This could also be a noun (e.g., a speeding fine) or a verb (e.g., ‘She was fined for speeding’.), or an adverb (‘Everything is going to work out fine.’).


 Adverb = 3 /quietly


 Preposition = 1 /against (e.g., sailing against the wind)


Conjunction = 5 /but
This could also be a preposition (e.g., ‘…no one there but me…’), or an adverb (e.g., ‘He is but a child.’).


Exclamation/interjection = 8 /Oh!

I hope you enjoy the task!

Anna