Grammar: parts of speech, tenses and agreement

Parts of speech

• Noun: a person, place, thing or idea (girl, Harare, honesty).
• Pronoun: replaces a noun (she, it, they).
• Verb: an action or state (run, is).
• Adjective: describes a noun (tall, green).
• Adverb: describes a verb, adjective or another adverb (quickly, very).
• Preposition: shows position or relationship (on, under, between).
• Conjunction: joins words or clauses (and, but, because).

Tenses

• Present simple: She walks to school. Present continuous: She is walking.
• Past simple: She walked. Past continuous: She was walking.
• Present perfect: She has walked. Past perfect: She had walked before the rain started.
• Future: She will walk.

Irregular verbs must be learnt: go – went – gone; write – wrote – written; bring – brought – brought.

Subject–verb agreement

• A singular subject takes a singular verb: “The box of books is heavy.” (The subject is “box”.)
• “Each”, “every”, “everyone” and “neither” are singular: “Everyone has a book.”
• Two subjects joined by “and” are plural: “Tendai and Sipho are late.”

Check yourself

1. Identify the adverb: “The choir sang beautifully.”
2. Give the past participle of “write”.
3. Correct the error: “Neither of the boys were present.”