 And now it's time to have a look at our first grammar unit. Grammar in its widest sense is the structure of a language. We as speakers of the language can structure our language without a problem. However, as teachers of the language, we need to be able to better analyze the grammar and the grammar that exists within statements that we make. These basic parts of grammar are called parts of speech. Each part of speech has a certain function within a sentence. Our example sentence here is, my older brother lives in Tokyo. Each one of these words is a certain part of speech which we'll have a look at in just a minute. But let's just think about the words within this particular sentence. We have my indicating whose brother it is. We have older indicating which brother it is. The word brother indicates the person in the sentence that is doing the action. Lives is the action within the sentence. In introduces the place of the action. And Tokyo indicates the actual place of the action. Listed here are some of the more important parts of speech. Many of these categories have some categories that we'll get into in a moment. But for now, what we'd like for you to do is at the end of this segment, pause your DVD. Let's begin our examination of parts of speech with nouns. Nouns are our naming words. They name a person or people such as Jack, Jill, Brother, Prime Minister. We have a place or places such as kitchen, Tokyo. Things are the things around us, pen, light, camera. We have our concepts and ideas, beauty, democracy. These people, things, places and concepts fall into two basic subcategories. Those subcategories are countable and uncountable. As their name suggests, the differentiation here is whether or not we can count our nouns or if we cannot count them. We have our countable nouns. Dogs, pens are two examples. The very nature of the words means that we can count these nouns, one dog or five pens. Then we have our uncountable nouns, the nouns that cannot be separated. Music, bread. It's important to notice and be able to identify the difference between countable and uncountable nouns as often this dictates the rest of our sentence. We have to use certain words with countable nouns and certain words with uncountable nouns. I can say I have many dogs in my neighborhood or I have a few pens here. However, if I want to talk about music or bread, I need to use words such as I haven't much music at home or I have a little bread. Nouns are uncountable. We cannot normally pluralize them. For example, I cannot say I have many types of music at home. Further subcategories of nouns include common nouns, proper nouns, compound nouns and collective nouns. A few examples of common nouns would be brother, city, street. These nouns are not typically capitalized unless they come at the beginning of the sentence. We have our proper nouns. A brother has a name like Tom. Tom needs a capital letter. It is a proper name. You have Tokyo. Tokyo is the proper name of a city. And Downing Street. Downing needs the capital as it's the proper name of the street. We also have our compound nouns. Common nouns put two nouns together in their thought of as one. They can be listed as two words, a hyphenated word or one word such as lifeboat, bookcase, car park. We also have our collective nouns. Collective nouns are the nouns that group individual things or people together. Family is one example. Family groups together relatives. We also have herd, a herd of cattle. Another example would be a pride, a pride of lions. Moving down our list of parts of speech we have our verbs. The first big difference between verbs that we need to look at is whether it's an action verb or a state verb. Our action verbs as the name suggests means that we typically can see these things in action. We can see people working and we certainly see people going to various places. Now we have our state verbs. These are basically indicating a state of being. Two examples would be seem and have or own. We have a sentence such as he seems angry and I own my house. You can't actually see the action happening even though those words are used as verbs. A very big differentiation between the two here as well is state verbs typically don't take the progressive or continuous form. That form is the verb plus ing. As I said before, he seems angry. It would be very awkward to hear someone say he's seeming angry. Additionally, own. I said I own my house. It would seem very awkward to hear somebody say he is owning his house. However, these action verbs do often take the ing form. We can easily say they are working or they are going. These are the progressive or continuous forms of the verb. We'll get into that when we talk about our various tenses. Another important type of verb is the auxiliary verb. More commonly referred to as the helping verb. These verbs aren't the main verbs within a sentence, but they help us form various structures. For instance, they can help us make questions. If I ask the question do I live in Tokyo, do is the auxiliary verb. It's helped me form the question. It helps us form negatives. If I said I do not live in Tokyo, again it's helping me form the negative statement and the auxiliary verb there is do. It helps us form the short answers. If I were to be asked do you live in Tokyo, I can form the short answer yes I do. Here, the auxiliary verb in the short answer must reflect the auxiliary verb used in the question. It also helps us form our tenses. Many of the tenses will use these auxiliary verbs. Particularly we have our continuous tense and our perfect tense. There are additional tenses that use auxiliary verbs and we'll get into that when we talk about our individual tenses. Another important aspect of our verbs is that they generally tell us what tense the sentence has been formed in. Take for instance the verb to live. We could use it as live or lives, living or lived. I live or she lives in Bangkok, meaning the present. I am living in Bangkok, still the present, or I lived in Bangkok, meaning the past. Another difference with our verbs has to do with whether or not the verb is regular or irregular. With the regular verbs, in order to conjugate the verb into the past, we simply add ed. We need not do anything more. I worked yesterday. I played football last Saturday. It's always the ed form. With the irregular verbs, in order to conjugate or change the verb into the past, we have to change the word completely. Or certainly we cannot simply add ed. So go goes to went. I went to the store yesterday. And speak goes to spoke. I spoke at a conference last Saturday. When changing the form of our verbs, there are a few patterns that we have to keep in mind. First of all, we have our one-syllable verbs, which follow a pattern at the end, consonant, vowel, consonant. In this instance, we have to double our final consonant before adding ing or ed. In two-syllable verbs, such as occur and happen, we have to be focused on where the stress in the verb comes. Here we've got occur, the stress is on the end of the word. Here we've got happen, where the stress is at the beginning of the word. When making these changes for the stress at the end of the word in patterns consonant, vowel, consonant, we double our final consonant before adding ing and ed. However, here, where we have the same pattern, consonant, vowel, consonant, yet the stress is at the beginning of the word, there is no doubling of the final consonant. Now we go back to our one-syllable verbs that end in y. Here we have a consonant before our y, as in cry. In here, we have a vowel before the y, as in play. In this instance, with consonant y, we only add ing to crying, but we have to drop the y and add ed for cry. However, when there's a vowel before the final y, we need not do anything, we only need to add ing or ed. Moving further down our list of parts of speech, we have our adjectives. Adjectives modify or describe nouns. Basically they give more information about the noun. Here we've used a noun such as chair. It could be any old chair, it's only the noun. If we want to describe the noun, we need to use an adjective before it. So I could say I have an old black leather chair. Here we have to be concerned about the adjective order. In this instance, I started with age, as age typically goes before color. And then I used a color to go before the material. This is a certain pattern. Depending on the adjectives you want to use, you always have to use certain patterns to which you'll need to be aware of when teaching your class. Another way to describe a noun is by showing possession. We do so by using our possessive adjectives. Earlier we used the example of chair as the noun. We talked about it in terms of age, material, etc. Now we could add words such as my, your, his, her, its, our, and their also to describe the chair. It's my chair, or it's her chair, or it's our chair. These are not to be confused with possessive pronouns, which of course we'll get into in just a moment. When forming our comparatives and our superlatives, we always have to be concerned with spelling patterns. With one syllable adjectives such as fast and old, where we have two consonants at the end, we simply add our E-R or our E-S-T's. However, with one syllable adjectives, where the pattern is consonant vowel, consonant, we have to double our final consonant before adding E-R or before adding E-S-T. Now with two syllable adjectives that end in Y, we drop our Y and add I-E-R or I-E-S-T. However, with all other two syllable or three syllable adjectives, we don't simply put E-R or E-S-T at the end. We'll typically keep the adjective as the same adjective here modern, but in order to make the comparative, we'll add more before modern. And when forming the superlative, we'll put the most before the adjective modern. And finally, when looking at our comparatives and superlatives, we must be aware that there are some irregular comparatives and superlatives. Two of the most common are the adjective good, changing to the comparative better and to the superlative the best. We also have the adjective bad, changing to the comparative worse and the superlative the worst. Now let's move on to our adverbs. Rather than describing nouns, our adverbs describe our verbs. There are four types of adverbs when describing verbs. They are manner. These describe how things are done. Two examples are quickly and cleverly. We have adverbs of place describing where the action happened. Two examples are here or there. We also have adverbs of time describing when the action happened. Two examples being now or recently. Finally, we have our adverbs of frequency telling us how often the action happens. Two examples being often or never. There's also another type of adverb, but here we're going to describe adjectives or other adverbs instead of verbs themselves. These are called adverbs of degree. If we were to take the adjective intelligent, we could easily say, he's very intelligent. She's really intelligent. They're quite intelligent or he's extremely intelligent. Now for other adverbs, we could use the adverb quickly. He ran very quickly. She ran really quickly. They ran quite quickly. Or he ran extremely quickly. Moving further down our list of the parts of speech, we have our prepositions. Prepositions show a relationship between a noun or a pronoun and the rest of the sentence. We have three main categories, time, place, and movement, as well as a miscellaneous category that doesn't fit the other three. Here we can have prepositions of time, before, during, in, at, or on. If I said, I work at eight o'clock, I'm showing a relationship between the time eight o'clock to the rest of the sentence. We have our prepositions of place, in, at, on, under, and between. If I said, the book is under the table, I'm showing a relationship between the table and the rest of the sentence. Then we have our prepositions of movement. These show movement towards, from, to, or through. I could say he walked through the park. I'm relating the park to the rest of the sentence. Finally we have our others, of, with, for, etc. I could say this is a gift for Gary. Again, I'm showing a relationship between Gary and the rest of the sentence. Of course the prepositions listed here are just a small example of all the prepositions. And now let's look at the pronouns. Simply put, pronouns take the place of a noun. We have various types of pronouns. They are personal pronouns, which can either be subject or object. We have reflexive pronouns, relative pronouns, and possessive pronouns. With our personal pronouns, we have to decide whether it's the subject or the object. The subject is the doer of an action, whereas the object is the one that receives the action. Subject pronouns are I, you, he, she, it, etc. Object pronouns are me, you, him, her, etc. In the sentence, Greg hit Pete. The subject of the sentence is Greg. Therefore, I would say he hit Pete. Or I could put a pronoun in for the object of the sentence, where Greg hit Pete, now I go into Greg hit him. With our reflexive pronouns, these are the actions that we do on to ourselves if we're speaking about ourselves or somebody else. So I could say I'm quite happy with myself, or I could say you seem quite happy with yourself. Our relative pronouns basically help us add more information about the subject of the sentence. So I could say Lake Michigan is a place where I go sailing every summer. Now let's take a look at the possessive pronouns, but we'll do so by looking at also the possessive adjectives. Now let's compare our possessive pronouns to our possessive adjectives. We can easily identify which is which by keeping in mind what our adjectives do. Our adjectives describe our nouns, therefore our possessive adjectives are describing the noun and followed by a noun. This is my pen. However, keeping in mind what the pronouns do, they take the place of a noun, our possessive pronouns do exactly that. It's mine. And one more example of this would be it's your pen and it's yours. And now we'll have a look at both the infinitive and the gerund. The infinitive is the word to followed by the base form of the verb. We'll typically use it after a verb, specifically verbs like want or hope. We can make statements like I want to go to the beach. We also have our gerund. Our gerund is a verb followed by ing, but specifically used as a noun within the sentence. We have a verb plus a gerund. I enjoy playing poker. The main verb is enjoy, and although playing looks as if it's a verb, it's actually used as the noun within the sentence. We also can use it with a preposition followed by a gerund. How about going to the beach? We could also put it in the front of a sentence. Smoking is bad for you. Again, the verb plus ing can act as two things within the sentence. We've got the gerund, otherwise the noun in the sentence. Smoking is bad for you. You've also got the verb plus ing in the present participle form, when it's the main verb of the sentence. An example thereof would be I'm not smoking. And now we'll have a look at our articles. We can divide articles into these groupings. Indefinite using a, or an an, definite using the. And oftentimes referred to as the zero article is actually the absence of an article altogether. With the indefinite article, we use it in a non-specific way. This is a pen. It's one of many pens. When using the definite article, we use it in a specific way. This is the pen I'm using. We also use the indefinite article when mentioning something for the first time. I have a boy and a girl. We use the definite article when mentioning that same thing an additional time, or any additional times we mention it. So I have a boy and a girl. The boy is eight, and the girl is six. With the zero article, we don't use an article at all. We use it to talk about things in general, or when we talk about all things together. So here, I would not use a or an, and I would simply say pens are used for writing, or children go to school. When looking at our articles, we have to remember that they always precede nouns. When looking at a versus an, many people consider this to be a differentiation between spellings. The noun will either start with a vowel or a consonant. More accurately, this should be described with how the noun sounds. Does it start with a vowel or a consonant sound? Let's look at the two words hour and university. While hour starts with an h, it actually sounds like it starts with a vowel sound. The resulting sentences are, I'll be there in an hour. Again, that's an hour. University starts with a u, a vowel. However, it sounds like it starts with a y, yuh, university. However, when we write it, or when we say it, we say it with an a, the a article. An example sentence could be, Cambridge is a university in England. And finally, let's take a look at our conjunctions. Conjunctions are linking or joining words. For example, and, but, and or. Take these two sentences, independent clauses, I like fish, I don't like shrimp. We would use but in here, and we could easily make one sentence. I like fish, but I don't like shrimp. If I wanted to say that I like fish, I like shrimp, I would simply say and I like fish and I like shrimp, or could be used in giving choices, such as in the question, do you like fish or shrimp? Here's some tips on completing your parts of speech worksheet. When providing examples for each part of speech, five one word answers will suffice for almost all of them. However, we'll need to clarify this for the gerunds. This is basically due to the fact that what you've written can either be used as the main verb in the sentence, that would be the present participle, or can be used as the gerund. For example, the word playing wouldn't be enough, as it can be used both as the verb or the gerund. So an example sentence such as, I like playing poker would suffice rather than simply the word playing.