Course N 01

Course n 01
Basic English grammar
Small children seem to have an intuitive grasp of language structure – which is

why they sometimes make mistakes, assuming principles that are not always
true. If you hear a child talk about ‘two mouses’ he is not repeating something
he has heard; he has understood the concept that we add the sound ‘-es’ to a
word ending in a ‘s’ sound, to create a plural. If he says, ‘the two mouses runned
away’, you know he has also understood that to create a past tense we usually
add the ending ‘-ed’ to a verb. Obviously there’s no need to ‘correct’ a child
who uses unconventional (though logical) forms like this; he will gradually learn
the various exceptions as he grows up. Many parents would say,’Yes, the two
mice ran away’ which gives the correct grammar while agreeing with the
content of what the child has said; that’s how most grammar is learned.
Why study grammar?
If it’s intuitive, and learned in the toddler years, what’s the point of learning
about parts of speeh and grammar in general?
Firstly, it can help us in writing if we know how our language is correctly used.
Conversation tends to be casual, but when we write letters, or job applications,
or articles, it’s important to know correct grammar if we are not to appear
ignorant. For instance, the phrase ‘could have’ is often pronounced ‘could’ve’
when we’re talking. Unfortunately, people who don’t understand grammar
sometimes write or type it as ‘could of’, which sounds the same but is incorrect.
Spell-checkers don’t help with this kind of mistake, nor with the differences
between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’ or ‘its’ and ‘it’s’.
Secondly, if you learn a foreign language when you’re a teenager or adult, the
grammar is likely to work differently. If you learn as a small child, you will
understand this intuitively, as with a first language. But by the time we get to
eight or nine, our brains have become somewhat hard-wired as far as language
goes, and it’s much more difficult to learn a new one. So it becomes important
to see how the grammatical structure works – and unless we understand English
grammar first, that’s almost impossible.
Thirdly, it’s interesting to study grammar, so long as you don’t treat it as a
chore!
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Parts of speech
Our language has around a quarter of a million distinct words. Amazingly, these
can be divided, grammatically speaking, into just eight kinds of word, which are
known as ‘parts of speech’. These are:
 nouns
 verbs
 prounouns
 adjectives
 adverbs
 prepositions
 conjunctions
 interjections
Nouns
The first words your child learns as a baby are likely to be nouns, which are –
broadly – words describing things, people or places. Ball, or cat, or milk, or fire-
engine are all examples of nouns. A ‘proper noun’ is a variety of noun which we
usually write with a capital letter, which gives a specific name to a particular
example of a noun. So ‘man’ is an ordinary noun, but ‘Grandpa’ or ‘Mr Smith’
are proper nouns.
A noun doesn’t have to describe something we can see or touch, although at first
these are the nouns your toddler will understand. ‘Abstract nouns’ describe
concepts: for instance beauty, love, greed, happiness.
Verbs
When your child starts stringing words together to make phrases, they will
almost certainly include a verb as well as a noun. A verb is an important part of
speech that describes something that is happening, or being done. Examples of
verbs are: run, jump, think, like, find. A toddler can communicate pretty well
with just nouns and verbs: ‘Johnny want biscuit’, ‘cuddle Mummy’, ‘see
Teletubbies’.
Verbs have many forms that help us understand who is being referred to, when
the action takes place, and so on. But they all form out of the basicroot which is
the simplest form of the verb, the one which a child almost certainly learns first.
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Pronouns
If we only had nouns to describe people, places and things, our language would
get rather convoluted and awkward. So we use pronouns – simple parts of
speech – to refer to nouns we have already mentioned, or which we assume.
Examples of pronouns are: me, you, it, him. As your child progresses through
toddlerhood you’ll notice that he stops saying, ‘Johnny want biscuit’, and learns
instead, ‘I want biscuit’. If you think about it, it’s pretty complex that we all
refer to ourselves as ‘I’ even though we all have different names. But, if you use
use the pronouns correctly, he will pick up their correct use without too much
difficulty, even if he makes a few mistakes along the way.
Adjectives
Since not every noun has a specific label, we can use another part of speech – an
adjective – to describe certain aspects of someone or something we want to talk
about. An adjective tells us more about a noun. Examples of adjectives are: nice,
greedy, happy, smart. Colours are a form of adjective too. So we might talk
about a tall man; a talkative child; a green car; a bouncy ball. A sentence usually
makes sense without any adjectives, but they add a bit of interest to our
conversation.
Two very important adjectives are the articles, ‘the’ and ‘a’ (or ‘an’). These are
also used to refer to specific or general nouns – as I’ve already done in the
examples above. We never find these words used on their own; they always
refer to a person, place or thing.
Adverbs
Another part of speech that helps us explain in more detail what we are talking
about is an adverb. Adverbs tell us more about the verbs we are using, and often
(though not always) end in -ly, such as nicely, greedily, happily, smartly. So we
might say: he walked slowly; she spoke thoughtfully; the children played
noisily.
Prepositions
The five parts of speech described briefly above form the majority of our
conversation. But there are three more important types of word. A preposition is
a rather long word describing a word that is usually very short, such as: by, with,
after, before. A preposition shows us the relationship of one object to another.
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So we might say: the cat is in the garden; the girl sat between her parents; my
shoes are under the bed.
Conjunctions
Another long word describing something short is a conjunction. This is a word

that links words or parts of sentences together, or contrasts them, such as and,
so, until, therefore. So we might say: James and John were asleep, but Joshua
was awake; I couldn’t get to sleep while the radio was on; if you’re ready, we’ll
go out.
Interjections
Finally, and relatively unimportant, comes the interjection. These are just simple
words that usually express strong emotion, coming alone or at the start of a
sentence, such as Oh!, Well, or Hooray!. So we might say,Wow! That was
brilliant; Goodness, I don’t know how you did that; Oh boy, that was tricky.

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Course n 01

Basic English grammar

Small children seem to have an intuitive grasp of language structure – which is

Why study grammar?

Another long word describing something short is a conjunction. This is a word

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