Part of Speech

We should not learn English grammar from the highest level. It will make us difficult or even we will be easy to give up learning it if we directly learn it from the highest level. What we need is just learning it step by step and we also need to be patient to learn it. This is the first step that we have to understand for the first time. That is about part of speech. We need to be able to recognize what word it is so that we can arrange the word into sentence correctly. To be able to recognize the English words we need to study ‘part of speech’.

We cannot arrange the words to make sentences if we do not know what words they are, because every word has different function. Last week when my English writing lecturer corrected my journal, she crossed some sentences in it. One of them was ‘the different between recount text and narrative text is…..’, because she said that the word ‘different’ in the sentence above is an adjective and it should be ‘difference’ or in another word it should be a noun, because after modifier it should be a noun and ‘the’ there is one of the modifiers.

Here are the words that are used to arrange the sentences in English. To make it easy to memorize we can call as PANCA VIP. It stands for Pronoun, Adjective, Noun, Conjunction, Adverb, Verb, Interjection and Preposition.

Parts of speech	Functions	Example words	Example Sentences
Pronoun	replaces a noun	I, you, they, we, she, him, it, their, myself..etc	Neviana is Indonesian. She is beautiful.
Adjective	describes a noun	good, big, red, interesting…etc	My dog is big. I like big dogs.
Noun	thing or person	pen, dog, book, teacher, house, John…etc	This is my dog. He lives in my house.
Conjunction	joins clauses or sentences or words	and, but, or….etc	I like cats and dogs. I like dogs but I don't like cats.
Adverb	describes a verb, adjective or adverb	quickly, often, at 7 o’clock, very, really…etc	My father drives his car slowly.
Verb	action or state	(to) be, have, do, like, work, sing, study…etc	Kid English Course is in my village. I like studying there.
Interjection	short exclamation	oh!, ouch!, hi!, great!, Oops!	Ouch! That hurts! Hi! How are you?
Preposition	links a noun to another word	to, at, after, on, for…etc	We went to school on Monday.

Example

Interjection	Pronoun	Conjunction	Adjective	Noun	Verb	Preposition	Noun	Adverb
Well,	she	and	young	John	walk	to	school	slowly.

Now your turn!  

Identify the words below! What words they are classified into.

a.       Cigarette

b.      Spoon

c.       Take

d.      Handsome

e.      Bring

f.        In summer

g.       Boxer

h.      Box

i.         Helmet

j.        Although

k.       Clothes

l.         Write

m.    Of

n.      Dear me!

o.      Nor

p.      Remember

q.      Ugly

r.        However

s.       Picture

t.        Newspaper

It is not the end of the English grammar. There are still many others that the English learners should learn. However, this is the basic skill needed to learn other English sentence structures. So, to understand others, please understand this first!

Good luck!