How to Identify Parts of Speech in a Paragraph

In English grammar, parts of speech are considered the base of all types writing and reading. Parts of speech are groups of words that own similar grammatical properties. According to the English grammar, these are categorized into eight parts, which includes noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, pronoun, conjunction and interjection.

The parts of speech help us in recognizing how a word is used in a sentence. Sometimes, the same word acts as a noun in one sentence and an adjective or verb in another sentence. For example, ‘All types of books are available in the library’ (Here, the ‘books’ is the noun). Let see another sentence, ‘Joe stand in a queue to book the movie ticket’. (Here, ‘book’ is a verb)

It is essential for students to understand how to identify parts of speech in a sentence or paragraph. This will enable them to comprehend what they read. Understanding the correct use of each part of speech will also help students to write meaningful and correct sentences. Let us see how to determine each part of speech in the paragraph.

1.   Noun: A noun can be a person, idea, place or thing. Generally, a noun acts as the subject of the sentence and also acts as a direct and indirect object. For example, ‘Sam’, ‘James’, ‘Africa’, ‘Japan’, ‘Window’, ‘Chair’ and ‘Goodness’ are nouns. A noun can be singular and plural and will be present in every sentence.

2.  Adjective: The role of adjectives is to describe and modify the nouns and pronouns in the sentence. It gives answers to the questions like ‘what kind’, ‘how many’, or ‘which one’. For instance, ‘beautiful’, ‘expressionless’, ‘Russian’, ‘American’, ‘bigger’, ‘blue-eyed’, ‘well behaved’, ‘polite’, etc. are adjectives.

3.  Verb: A verb expresses some kind of action, happening or state of being. The action or occurrence can be described in different tenses including past, present and future. For example, ‘run’, ‘hear’, ‘dance’, ‘write’, ‘drive’, etc.

4.  Adverb: Adverbs are those words that modify verbs, adjectives and other adverbs. For example, ‘quickly’, ‘slowly’, ‘loudly’, ‘unfortunately’, ‘angrily’, ‘happily’ and ‘gracefully’ are adverb.

5.  Preposition: The role of preposition is to join a noun, pronoun or noun phrase to other part of the sentence. In simple words, it explains a relationship between other words in a sentence. For instance, ‘under’, ‘next to’, ‘over’, ‘into’, ‘across’, ‘in’, ‘at’ and ‘with’, etc. are prepositions.

6. Conjunction: Conjunctions are those words that link other word, phrase and clauses in a sentence. For instance, ‘but’, ‘so’, ‘for’, ‘nor’, ‘or’, etc.

7.  Pronoun: Pronouns are those words that replace nouns or take the place of nouns in a sentence. For example, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘I’, ‘few’, ‘many’, ‘everyone’, ‘someone’ and ‘everybody’ are pronouns.

8.  Interjection: Interjections in a sentence are the words that make an exclamation. For instance, ‘wow’, ‘what’, ‘oh’, ‘hey’, ‘ouch’, etc.