A subject pronoun takes the place of a noun as the subject of a sentence. These pronouns are: (i) Singular forms – I, you, he, she, it (ii) Plural forms – we, you, they Examples: Noun Subject Pronoun The house girl takes care of the baby She takes care of the baby The dog guards the […]
A pronoun is a part of speech that takes the place of a noun. They include such words as I, we, he, she, thy, me and us. Pronouns enable you to avoid repeating the same names (nouns), when writing or speaking, which would otherwise make you sound very awkward and wordy. By using pronouns effectively,
A contraction is a shortened form of two words. One or more letters are omitted and an apostrophe (’) is used in place of the letters left out. A contraction is formed by combining pronouns and the verbs am, is, are, will, would, have, has, and had. Pronoun + verb Contraction Pronoun + verb Contraction
CONTRACTIONS WITH PRONOUNS Read More »
All nouns can be described as either common or proper. When you talk or write about a person, a place, a thing, or an idea in general, you use a common noun. Example: Doctors work hard. They treat many patients. A proper noun is the name of a particular person, place, thing, or idea. Proper nouns
COMMON AND PROPER NOUNS Read More »
All words may be classified into groups called parts of speech. There are 8 parts of speech namely: Nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections. We shall now discuss these parts of speech one at a time: NOUNS A noun is the part of speech that names a person, a place, a thing
A demonstrative adjective tells which one or which ones. They are used before nouns and other adjectives. There are 4 demonstrative adjectives in English: This, that, these and those. This and these are used to refer to nouns close to the speaker or writer. That and those refer to nouns farther away. This and that
DEMONSTRATIVE ADJECTIVES Read More »
A noun may be either singular or plural. A singular noun names one person, place, thing, or idea. Example: The farmer drove to the market in his truck. A plural noun names more than one person, place, thing or idea. Example: The farmers drove to the markets in their trucks. Rules for forming plurals The following are
SINGULAR AND PLURAL NOUNS Read More »
A participle is a verb form that always acts as an adjective. There are two types of participles: (a) The past participle – it is usually formed by adding –d, or -ed to the present tense. Examples: Fooled, the shopkeeper bought fake products. (Fooled is a past participle modifying the noun shopkeeper) Shaken, he dashed
PARTICIPIAL PHRASES Read More »
Adverbs of time These answer the question when? Examples: He joined the class yesterday. Today, I will go to the cinema. Adverbs of place These answer, the question where? Examples: Mrs. Joyce has gone out. The bus stop is near the post office. Adverbs of frequency These answer the question how often? Examples: She often
SPECIFIC CATEGORIES OF ADVERBS Read More »
Capitalization is the writing of a word with its first letter as an upper case and the remaining letters in lower case. The following are the cases when capitalization is used: (A) Abbreviations Abbreviations begin with a capital letter. (i) Titles of persons Examples: Prof. George Saitoti, Mr. Stephen Kiama Dr. Ephantus Maree,
A prepositional phrase is made up of a preposition, the object of the preposition, and all the words between them. It often functions as an adjective or adverb, but it can function as a noun as well. Examples: We carried the fruits in our school bags. (adverb telling where) The plane flew through the cloud.
PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES Read More »
A phrase is a group of words without a subject or a predicate or both and does not express a complete thought. Therefore, a phrase can never stand on its own as a complete sentence. Using different kinds of phrases enables a writer or a speaker to create informative and descriptive sentences that vary in
A verb phrase consists of a main verb and its helping verbs. It can function as the predicate of a sentence. The predicate tells what the subject does or is. (It tells something about the subject). Examples: John was born in Malindi. This problem may have contributed to the collapse of the economy. Without highly
A verb which is in past tense shows what has already happened. Example: Tito liked his grandmother’s story. The verb liked tells that the action in the sentence happened before now. Rules for forming the Past Tense Most verbs: Add -ed Play – played Talk – talked Climb – climbed Verbs ending with e: Add -d
An adjectival clause acts as an adjective in a sentence, that is, it modifies a noun or a pronoun. Examples: The bushman, who knew the forest well, told us about the hidden cave. (Who knew the forest well is an adjectival clause that modifies the noun bushman). The bushman told us a legend that involved
ADJECTIVAL CLAUSES Read More »
These are adjectives which tell how many or how much. They give the number or the quantity, either specific or approximate, of the noun in question. They are also referred to as numerals Examples: Three elephants were killed by the game rangers. He bought several houses in Kileleshwa. Don’t put much sugar in the tea! More
DEFINITE AND INDEFINITE ADJECTIVES Read More »
SCHEME OF WORK FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE SS 1, Get the latest Scheme of work for your studies, Nigerian Scheme of work for Senior Schools, Scheme of Work for Nigeria Curriculum,
SCHEME OF WORK FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE SS 1 Read More »
An interrogative pronoun is used to ask a question. These pronouns are who, whose, whom, which and what. Examples: Who is the mayor of this town? Whose is the red car? Which is her blouse? What did she ask you? Whom should I trust with my secret? USING WHO, WHOM, AND WHOSE Who, whom, and whose
INTERROGATIVE PRONOUNS Read More »
Some sentences do not take objects or adverbs (or adverbial phrases) after the verbs. Instead, they take complements. A complement is the part of the sentence that gives more information about the subject (subject complement) or about the object (object complement) of the sentence. Subject complements Subject complements normally follow certain verbs like be, seem,
There are five kinds of sentences classified according to their end marks and the different jobs they do: (i) Declarative sentences (ii) Interrogative sentences (iii) Exclamatory sentences (iv) Imperative sentences (v) Conditional sentences (i) Declarative sentences: A declarative sentence simply states a fact or argument without requiring either an answer or action from the reader
KINDS OF SENTENCES Read More »