How to Use Nouns in Sentence Construction

A noun is one of the eight parts of speech that comprise the English language. For those who are learning how to properly write in English, understanding the concept of how to use nouns when constructing sentences can be complex. To effectively understand this essential technique of English grammar and writing, it is best to practice sentence structure exercises. With time, a student can graduate from working with simple sentence structure to learning a more complex usage of nouns in sentence construction.

Things You'll Need

  • sentence structure exercises
  • English grammar reference guide
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Instructions

    • 1

      Define a noun. In the English language, a noun is classified as a person, place, thing or idea. For example, the words "vehicle," "boy," "zebra" and "happiness" are all nouns.

    • 2

      Review simple sentence components. Sentences have the following components: nouns, verbs, prepositions and articles. Although nouns and verbs are required in every sentence, prepositions and articles are not. While the definition of nouns has already been established, articles are words such as "the," "an" or "a" that are used to determine a noun. Verbs are used to describe action taking place. For example, verbs can vary from the words "run," "jump" and "hop" to phrases such as "to have," "to live" or "to be." Prepositions are used to signify relations with words in a sentence. Common prepositions are the words "in," "at," "on," "down," "up" and "across."

    • 3

      Practice simple sentence structure. All sentences fall into four categories: orders, questions, statements or exclamations.

    • 4

      Write practice sentences for each of the four categories. These sentences can be as simple as, "Are you going to work today?" or "Please remove your shoes."

    • 5

      Analyze your practice sentences. Identify the sentence components. For example, in the previous sentence of "Please remove your shoes," the verb is the word "remove." "Shoes" is the noun in this sentence. While there is no preposition, the word "please" is classified as an adverb as the word explains to the reader the conditions of the action -- this is evident as this command is being given in a polite manner. The word "your" is an adjective as it modifies the noun "shoes" by describing who the shoes belong to.

    • 6

      Add pronouns to your sentence construction. Pronouns are used to replace nouns. Common pronouns include: "I," "we," "you," "us," "he," "she" and "them." Use a pronoun by changing sentence composition. For example, instead of saying, "Stacy eats cookies," you can write, "She eats cookies."

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