The most challenging part of the English language might be what makes up the language itself. Grammar refers to the mechanics of English, rules that help people understand it through written and verbal forms of communication. Grammar is mainly taught in all English speaking schools, mostly in the students’ adolescent years, or all the way up until they attend a college or university. It is a complex part of the English language because there are so many components to it. When starting with grammar, you have to be familiar with the parts of speech, which refers to labels of just about every word used in the English language. After learning that you go right into sentence structure, which provides its own set of rules.
The main way to learn English grammar has little to do with practice but more so with understanding how everything is connected. Once you realize the purpose of grammar rules, everything will flow easy when it comes to learning to speak English. It’s important to start with the parts of speech which will indicate the purpose of basically all words. Knowing this information will help you lead right into sentence structure. Sentence structure is a vital part of learning English grammar as it will be the blueprint of how you communicate. Sentence structure also comes with its own sets of rules that can make things complex really fast. This is the aspect of grammar where you’re figuring out how to arrange your message so it can come across effectively to the person you’re talking to. It sounds like a hard task, but it won’t be that difficult once you have prepared yourself in knowing the particular details of English grammar. Knowledge of the basic rules of grammar will be the ultimate key in learning this. After finishing this article, if you still need help with your English grammar skills, you can always use HiCafe Private English Tutoring services.
Parts of Speech in English Grammar
In order to learn English grammar, you have to be familiar with the parts of speech. These labels indicate how words are classified and where they can be used in a sentence when communicating with someone. Essentially, there are 8 parts of speech within English language grammar. Those parts are nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections. Believe it or not, all 8 of these labels cover just about every word in the English language.
Nouns
Nouns refer to a person, place or thing. It’s basically the first thing you learn when learning English grammar. Nouns actually come in 2 categories as well: common and proper. Common nouns are just calling the generic name of the person, place or thing. For example, a restaurant would just be called a restaurant or a car would just be called a car. Proper nouns refer to the actual names of those nouns. For example, a restaurant would be called McDonald’s or a car would be called a Toyota. For a person, their common noun would be their gender, whether they are a boy or a girl; their proper noun would be their actual name.
Pronouns
Pronouns are actually generic labels of all the nouns, even more so than common nouns. The English grammar pronouns are He, She, It, They, Them, I, You, We and Us. “He” and “She” refer to a male and female person respectively while “It” refers to an object. “They” and “Them” refer to other people, while “We” and “Us” refers to a group that is with you. “I” refers to yourself and “You” refers to someone else. Notice that a few of these references have different labels for similar reasons. When you use any of these pronouns, it will all depend on the context around them.
Verbs
Verbs are words that speak of an action being done. Words such as “learn”, “clean” or “help” are all examples of verbs as they talk about something in action.
Adjectives
Adjectives are words that describe something. Examples of these words would be “happy”, “sad” or “hungry”. Colors would also be considered adjectives as they are used in describing many objects.
Adverbs
Adverbs are somewhat of a combination of verbs and adjectives, they describe or modify a verb, adjective or another adverb.
Prepositions
Prepositions are words that indicate a position and are usually placed before a noun. Some common prepositions are “by”, “with”, “until” and “from”.
Conjunctions
Conjunctions are words that connect words, sentences and phrases. The common conjunctions are “and”, “but”, “or” and “while”. Just like the nouns, conjunctions come in 2 categories. You have coordinating conjunctions that connect equal elements (and, or, for) and you also have subordinating conjunctions that connect unequal elements (because, although, since).
Interjections
An interjection is a word that is used to express excitement and is followed by an exclamation point. Some examples for this include “Oh!” and “Wow!”.
Rules of English Grammar
In general, there are only 12 rules of basic English grammar that you need to follow. These rules generally cover everything from word choice and tone to pronoun selection and sentence structure. Some of the rules are very simple and self-explanatory while others come with a bunch of rules in order to be executed properly. However, when you put all of these together, and implement them into action, you begin to learn English speaking quite fluently.
- Parts of Speech
This is what starts off learning English grammar overall. Knowing the different parts of speech – nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions and interjections. As you become familiar with what each of these categories are, the process for learning English grammar becomes easier.
- Sentence Structure
This refers to how all complete sentences should be constructed. Each sentence should contain a subject – usually a noun of some sort – and a predicate – usually some sort of action involved.
- Agreement
Sometimes this is referred to as the “Subject-Verb Agreement”. It shows the relationship between the subject and predicate, which could bring about modifiers for certain words.
- Tense Consistency
Verbs must be used consistently in the same tense within a sentence.
- Pronoun Agreement
This is asking for pronouns to be used in the same tense as their anticipated or referring word. Basically, it’s saying that each pronoun should match its purpose. For example, If you are referring to a male, then use the word “He”; if referring to an object then use the wors “It”.
- Modifiers
This refers to adjectives and adverbs. These labels are considered modifiers because they enhance the word that follows them.
- Parallelism
A list of comparisons expressed in a parallel form.
- Capitalization
This involves writing letters in uppercase fashion. Capitalization occurs at the beginning of sentences and also at the beginning of proper nouns.
- Punctuation
Punctuation is a vital factor when learning to read and write English. The most common form of punctuation is the period, which is the dot at the end of sentences. It stops sentences and turns them into a complete instead of making them look like run-on. Other forms of punctuation include the comma, exclamation point, colon, semicolon and question mark. The comma gives long sentences breaks, or pauses, so the reader doesn’t feel like they are running through a sentence all at once.
- Spelling
Correctly spelled words will help you get your message across more effectively as the reader will recognize and understand what you’re discussing. There are some words within the English language that sound the same but the spelling difference indicates a different meaning for each.
- Word Choice
This is similar to the spelling rule, except the words referred to on this rule might have more to do with sharing similar definitions. Some words’ meaning might have more of an effective impact on certain sentences than others, and that’s where this rule comes in handy.
- Tone
This pretty much involves everything learned so far about English grammar. Tone is the mood or context provided for a conversation whether it’s verbal or written. When learning English grammar, you will probably be reading a lot of material, so you will gather the tone of what you’re reading from different words being in a sentence and probably from previous sentences you have read at that moment.
English grammar is a complex subject to learn which requires a lot more preparation than practice. There are so many rules and components to it that are needed in order for it to be practiced in an effective manner. It all starts with the eight parts of speech that lets you know how words are classified. From there, you go right to the basic rules of English grammar which gives you direction of how you will implement these parts of speech in various forms of communication.
As daunting as these tasks appear to be, the HiCafe site can be a valuable resource in learning English grammar. HiCafe offers all-inclusive resources that help learn the English language including 300+ articles for learning and practicing English grammar step-by-step.