As most of us learned in elementary school, a noun is a person, place or thing. Words such as "professor," "downtown," "table" and "emotion" are examples of nouns. A proper noun is the name of a person (Elvis Presley), place (Seattle) or thing (Toyota Prius), and it is always capitalized. A pronoun is a word used in place of a noun, for example, "she" instead of "my daughter" or "Jennifer." Another way to remember nouns and pronouns is to think of them as the words in a sentence that answer questions "Who?" and "What?"
Verbs indicate an action, such as "run," "play" or "think." Verbs are also used to indicate a state of being, as in "be," "seem" or "feel." Verbs have different forms, called tenses, which show whether the action or state of being occurs in the past, present or future --- for example, "worked," "work" and "will work." A verb may have more than one part, for example "is cooking" or "have been sleeping." Keep in mind that a word's part of speech can change depending on how it is used in a sentence. For example, the word "cry" can be used as both a verb ("I cry whenever I watch a sad movie") and a noun ("The baby's cry startled me").
An adjective describes a noun. In the sentence "It was a clear, beautiful day," the adjectives "clear" and "beautiful" describe the noun "day." Similarly, an adverb is used to describe a verb. For example, in the sentence "The boy ran quickly," the adverb "quickly" describes how the boy ran. Adverbs can also describe an adjective or another adverb. In the example "It's getting very late," "very" is an adverb that describes "late." Adverbs often end in "ly."
Common prepositions include "to," "from," "across," "at" and "during." These words indicate a direction, location or relationship of time or place. In the sentence "Hang the mirror above the fireplace," the preposition "above" shows the location of the mirror in relation to the fireplace. The combination of a preposition and a noun or pronoun is called a prepositional phrase. An example of a prepositional phrase is "at school" in the sentence "The boy learned to read at school."
A conjunction joins two or more words or groups of words. In the sentence "We ate pizza and burgers," "and" is a conjunction that connects the two items (pizza and burgers). Other common conjunctions are "or," "but," "nor" and "for." An interjection is a word or phrase used for expressing emotion. Interjections serve no other grammatical purpose and are more often used in speaking than in writing. They are often followed by an exclamation point. Examples of interjections include "wow," "hey" and "oh dear."