The 8 Parts of Speech

One of the key English skills that all students know is that you need a large vocabulary. But how do you learn new words? Most importantly, you don’t learn them in isolation. You learn collocations, which means how words work together.

You need to learn how to use a word or else knowing it is useless. Thus, it is essential that you know the different parts of speech in order to succeed in IELTS Exam. Through this blog, We will talk about verbs and nouns, adverbs and adjectives, and prepositions and conjunctions. These are some of the parts of speech that make up the English language, and it is important that you know what the words mean.

In this article, We will explain the parts of speech so that you can understand the English Grammar better.

In the English language, all words can be broken down into eight categories. They are:

nouns
verbs
adjectives
adverbs
prepositions
conjunctions
pronouns
interjections

Some people argue that articles (a/an/the) are a separate category called articles or determiners; however, you can include these as a sort of adjective. In most textbooks, they list 8 parts of speech, so that’s what we will use here to avoid confusion.

In order to do well in IELTS, you need to have a good knowledge of English. That’s pretty obvious, right? But how can you know the language well unless you know its basic structure? If you want to learn new words, you need to know how to use them. You should know some really basic things like:

adjectives add detail to nouns
adverbs give more information about verbs
pronouns replace nouns

It is tremendously important that you understand these basics so that you can then develop more advanced skills. In English, we have a saying:

“You need to walk before you can run.”

This is true of language, too. If you want to speak English at an IELTS 7 level, you have to work your way up from the basics. We often tell our readers or students that they need to master the simple sentence before they can try the complex sentence.

Even when you get to the more advanced grammatical structures, you should be thinking in terms of parts of speech.

Let’s now take each of the 8 parts of speech in turn and explore its meaning.

1. Noun

Definition: A person, place, idea, or thing
Example: France, a mountain, Steven, sheep, socialism
Sentences:
- The moon is bright.
- John is reading that book.

2. Pronoun

Definition: A pronoun replaces a noun. Sometimes this is done to avoid repetition.
Example: he, his, her, I, we
Sentences:
- They wanted us to go with them.
- He asked her to the dance but she said no.

3. Adjective

Definition: An adjective describes, changes, or gives extra information about a noun or pronoun.
Example: long, high, red, fast, British, angry
Sentences:
- The tall man looked at the beautiful woman.
- The slow car stopped by the big supermarket.

4. Adverb

Definition: An adverb describes a verb, adjective, or even another adverb. They often end in “-ly”.
Example: quickly, silently, cunningly, amusingly, frankly, eventfully, coyly
Sentences:
- She quickly ran out to get help.
- He drove carefully to the village.

5. Verb

Definition: A verb is usually an action, but may also indicate a state of being.
Examples: think, run, dance, sing, believe
Sentences:
- He studies English so he can go to America.
- They think they can beat their rivals.

6. Conjunction

Definition: A conjunction joins two words or groups of words, and can connect clauses.
Examples: and, but, or, yet
Sentences:
- They want to go skiing, but it’s too expensive.
- She ate ice cream and cake for dessert.

7. Preposition

Definition: Shows the relationship between a noun (or pronoun) and another word.
Examples: on, at, in, from, about
Sentences:
- The keys are on the table.
- She sat near the door.