English Grammar Fundamentals

Parts of Speech

• Nouns: Words that refer to people, places, things, and ideas
  • Proper nouns: Names of specific people, places, and organizations (capitalized)
  • Common nouns: General terms for things and ideas
  • Collective nouns: Groups of people, animals, or things
• Verbs: Words that express action, occurrence, or state of being
  • Action verbs: Express physical or mental action
  • Linking verbs: Connect the subject to additional information
  • Helping verbs: Used to help form the tense, mood, or voice of another verb
• Adjectives: Words that modify or describe nouns or pronouns
  • Quantitative adjectives: Describe quantity or amount
  • Qualitative adjectives: Describe quality or characteristic
• Adverbs: Words that modify or describe verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs
  • Manner adverbs: Describe the way something is done
  • Time adverbs: Describe when something is done
  • Place adverbs: Describe where something is done
• Pronouns: Words that replace nouns in a sentence
  • Personal pronouns: Replace nouns that refer to people or animals
  • Possessive pronouns: Show ownership or possession
  • Reflexive pronouns: Refer back to the subject of the sentence
• Prepositions: Words that show the relationship between a noun or pronoun and other words in a sentence
• Conjunctions: Words that connect words, phrases, or clauses in a sentence
• Interjections: Words that express emotion or feeling

Sentence Structure

• Independent clauses: Clauses that have a subject and a predicate
• Dependent clauses: Clauses that do not have a complete thought
• Simple sentences: Sentences that have one independent clause
• Compound sentences: Sentences that have two or more independent clauses
• Complex sentences: Sentences that have one independent clause and one or more dependent clauses
• Compound-complex sentences: Sentences that have two or more independent clauses and one or more dependent clauses

Tense and Aspect

• Present tense: Describes an action that is happening now
• Past tense: Describes an action that happened in the past
• Future tense: Describes an action that will happen in the future
• Aspect: Refers to the duration or completion of an action
  • Simple aspect: Describes an action that happens at a specific point in time
  • Progressive aspect: Describes an action that is ongoing
  • Perfect aspect: Describes an action that started in the past and continues up to the present
  • Perfect continuous aspect: Describes an action that started in the past and continues up to the present

Modality

• Modal verbs: Verbs that express degrees of possibility, necessity, or obligation
  • Can: Expresses ability or capacity
  • Could: Expresses possibility or permission
  • May: Expresses permission or possibility
  • Might: Expresses possibility or uncertainty
  • Shall: Expresses obligation or necessity
  • Should: Expresses obligation or advisability
  • Will: Expresses future action or intention
  • Would: Expresses hypothetical or uncertain situations