Free English Lessons from ZbEnglish.net

Welcome to ZbEnglish.net

Parts of Speech
Chapter 10  - Identification of Parts of Speech

Now that you have learned all the parts of speech, you can identify the words in a sentence.  This chapter will give you some clues that will make identification easier.

First of all, a word can be more than one part of speech and you have to look at how the word works in a particular sentence to know what part of speech it is.  The chart below shows examples of words that have more than one part of speech.
 

Word	Sentence	Part of Speech
can	I think I can do it.	verb
can	Don't open that can of beans.	noun
only	This is my only pen.	adjective
only	He was only joking.	adverb
his	That book is his.	pronoun
his	That is his book.	adjective
English	Can you speak English?	noun
English	I am reading an English novel.	adjective

The verb is the heart of a sentence, so it is a good idea to identify the verb first when looking at a sentence.   Verbs can be recognized through:
     past tense ending (looked)
     3rd person singular ending (says)
     auxiliary verb (will see)
     modal verb (can hear)

There are also  verb endings or suffixes that can help you recognize verbs.  Some common verb endings are listed in the chart below.

Review this lesson as many times as you want, and when you are ready, take the comprehensive quiz.

1)  Which does not belong with the others?