Welcome to our online grammar tutorial.

After completing this unit, you should be familiar with the most common terms used in English grammar.

Part 1

• Nouns are usually names of things, e.g. house, man, car, word
• Singular nouns like book (one book) or apple can be used with a/an
• Plural nouns can be regular (e.g. flower - flowers) or irregular (e.g. man - men or baby - babies)
• Countable nouns can be seen in units (e.g. a cup, a table, one spoon)
• Uncountable nouns are things that cannot be seen in units (e.g. rice, water, information) and cannot normally be used with a/an

Part 2

• A verb is a word or phrase indicating what something or somebody does (go, make, eat) or the state they are in.
• Auxiliary verbs (be, have or do) are used with other verbs to make questions, negatives, tenses or passives.
• Modal auxiliary verbs (can, could, will, would) are used to add special meanings like possibility or obligation to a sentence.
• A phrasal verb is a multi-word verb followed by a preposition (sit on, look up) or by an adverb particle (switch off, look out).
• Verbs can take on different forms to express time relations (i.e. tenses). Verbs can be regular (work - worked, stop - stopped) or irregular (go - went - gone, do - did - done).

Part 3

• A subject is a noun or equivalent which represents the person or object that is doing the action expressed by the verb (The man reads a book). It usually comes before the verb.
• The object usually comes after the verb and says what something happens to (He writes a letter.)

Part 4

• An adjective is a word that gives more information about a noun or pronoun (a new car, an old man, a good book).
• Comparative adjectives: big - bigger, small - smaller, interesting - more interesting
• Superlative adjectives: big - biggest, small - smallest, interesting - most interesting
• Adverbs are used to describe verbs (He drove carefully.), adverbs (The test was surprisingly easy.)or other parts of a sentence.
• Adverb particles follow verbs ( Switch on the light!, Watch out!) and should not be confused with prepositions.

Part 5

• A pronoun is a word used to replace a noun that has already been mentioned or that will be mentioned later
• personal pronoun: I, you, he,  she, it, we, you, they
• possessive pronoun: mine, yours
• reflexive pronouns: myself, yourself
• relative pronouns: Who, whose, which, that

Part 6

• Determiners are before nouns and adjectives
• article: a/an, the
• possessives: my your
• demonstratives: this, that
• quantifiers: much, many, some, any

Part 7

• forms of the verb
• infinitive: first form (to do, to go, to ask)
• past simple: second form (did, went, asked)
• past participle: third form (done, gone, asked)

Part 8

• Prepositions are added to nouns and pronouns:
• prepositions of time: on Monday, in 1998, at two o'clock, for three weeks, in a year
• prepositions of place: in England, on the table, at the station, under the chair, up the hill
• prepositions at the end of the sentence: Where is she from? What are you thinking about?
• phrasal preposition: a preposition following a verb (cut down on, look forward to)

Part 9

• A sentence starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, a question mark or an exclamation mark.
• affirmative sentences make statements (I am a teacher.)
• interrogative sentences ask questions (Are you a teacher?)
• negative sentences use not  (I am not a teacher.)
• A conditional sentence has a subordinate clause, usually beginning with if, stipulating a condition that must be fulfilled before what the main clause says can be true (If I find a wallet, I will give it back.).
• A subordinate clause is introduced by a conjunction (if, when, because, although)
• Contractions are short forms ( do not = don't, I am = I'm, we will = we'll)
• Question tags are used to check if something is true (You don’t eat fish, do you?)or to ask for agreement ( The weather is nice, isn’t it?)

Part 10

• vowel: a, e, i , o, u
• consonant: b, c, d, f, g,
• capital letter: English, Monday, Calvin
• syllable: gram - mar
• stress: pronouncing one syllable more than others (Eng-lish)
• intonation: questions usually end with rising intonation

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