Lesson One: Part of Speech

Words are the building blocks of language. Understanding their roles is the key to mastering any language.

• Some would argue that the mere concept of “part of speech” is too complicated for young learners or anyone with insufficient background knowledge. If you belong to either group, or simply feel overwhelmed, I recommend focusing solely on the curriculum your trainer has outlined.

• While it’s true that “part of speech” is more of a linguistic concept than an English lesson, being able to categorize the words of the English language appropriately is the best indicator of a person’s overall understanding of English.

• Also, the fact that it’s not exclusive to English is a major theme here. I try to cover all lessons in a way that enhances your communication and linguistics knowledge above all, as I believe that’s the strongest component in language comprehension.

• Therefore, mastering this topic won’t just improve your English; it will enrich your language learning ability by default!

Special thanks to Craig Shrives from Grammar Monster for inspiring many of these insights!

The Core Concept

Let’s start with the official definition, but don’t worry, we’ll break it down into bite-sized pieces:

A “part of speech” is a category to which a word is assigned in accordance with its syntactic functions. In English, the main parts of speech are noun, adjective, verb, adverb. (Oxford Dictionary)

That definition is true, but it’s not the whole truth! There are plenty of other parts of speech in English, but that’s not how we’re going to approach this in Joyful Speaking! I believe that every concept should be introduced as simply as possible at the beginning. Once you can utilize the little you learn, you’re in the best position to handle more!

But remember, your first and most important goal for fluency in English is to truly master these four. That’s it. Everything beyond them is extra, valuable in its own way, but only once you’ve got these down properly. A good grasp of these core categories will become a real stepping stone toward turning you into an exceptional orator!

So, to give us the focus we need to proceed, I’m going to repeat the four essential parts of speech of the English language again.

The Fantastic Four:

1.  Noun
2.  Adjective
3.  Verb
4.  Adverb

Think of these as the primary colors of language, master these, and you can create any meaning you need!

I also highly recommend delving deep into the exact meaning of each category (e.g., “What is a noun?”). A foundational understanding of each concept is the key to navigating their complexity effortlessly.

The Essential Guide

Nouns

So what is a noun? A noun names a person, place, or thing. Think of it as a “label” for concepts. The latter is very crucial! We’ll discuss later that the best way to verify whether something is a noun is to try to grasp the meaning of the word itself.

Examples

• Words:

  cat, London, happiness, teacher, phone.

• In Action:

  • The teacher works in a school.
  • Happiness is an important part of life.

• Tip:

  So there are certain suffixes such as -ness and -tion that indicate the word is a noun. It’s useful to learn that. I’ll provide more information on this in future lessons.

Adjective

An adjective modifies a noun or a pronoun. Or as I’d like to call it: “That which describes a noun.” At its core, an adjective always provides more information about a noun.

Examples

• Words:

  big, happy, blue, fast, difficult.

• In Action:

  • She has a blue car.
  • It was a difficult test.

• Tip:

  Words ending in -ful or -able are often adjectives. Once you start noticing these patterns, it becomes much easier to identify them in everyday use. We’ll explore this more in future lessons.

Verb

A verb identifies an action or state of being. A verb always conveys the occurrence (the happening) of an action or connects an adjective to the noun (state of being).

Examples

• Words:

  is, think, become, travel, run.

• In Action:

  • They run every morning. (the happening of an action)
  • She is very kind. (connecting adjective to noun)

• Tip:

  Verbs can also change form by adding endings like -ing or -ed (e.g., “walk” → “walking” or “walked”), showing time or action progress. Keep an eye on these little changes—they reveal a lot about how verbs work. We’ll look deeper into this soon.

Adverb

An adverb modifies a verb. Or as I’d like to call it: “That which describes a verb.” An adverb always gives us more information about the verb, such as how, when, where, or to what extent something happens.

Examples

• Words:

  quickly, happily, well, yesterday, very.

• In Action:

  • She ran quickly to catch the bus.
  • He speaks well in public.

• Tip:

  Most adverbs are formed by adding -ly to adjectives (e.g., “happy” → “happily”), but not always—“well” is a good exception to remember. Again, I’ll expand on this in future lessons.

Your Next Step: Practice!

The next step is to try to categorize all the words that you already know! The best way to accomplish that is to start by asking the magic questions:

And when you encounter a new word, follow the same routine!

With my own students, we already have a vocabulary notebook from the beginning of the course, so they have a proper archive of everything they learned (I will cover how to make the most of a vocabulary notebook on a future blog post without a doubt!). They can start from there to implement this technique.

If you haven’t started using a vocabulary notebook yet, it’s time to get a nice, small one and start gathering all the words you regularly need and want to know.

Each entry should include the part of speech signifier right next to the word. E.g.:

• Action (n) → n stands for noun
• Act (v) → v stands for verb
• Active (adj) → adj stands for adjective
• Actively (adv) → adv stands for adverb

Pro Tip: If you can’t tell which part of speech a word belongs to, you can’t make a proper sentence with it, and that means you don’t even fully know the word! This sounds negative at first, but understanding the words you truly know versus the ones you don’t know yet will become a great boon down the road.

I’ll finish by emphasizing the power of part of speech:

Remind yourself which part of speech all the new words you run into belong to as often as possible. This is the best attempt at turning things to the next level, both as a communicator and a language learner.

In the future, I’ll gradually share blog posts that delve deep into each part. We will extensively examine the affixes and structures that are tied to these concepts.

The greatest thing is it all becomes a fun puzzle to solve in the end! That’s why I love this topic so much.

Stay tuned for future lessons! Happy studying!