What Are Parts of Speech?

Every Word Has a Job

In a sentence, every word plays a specific role — just like every player on a sports team has a position. These roles are called parts of speech. English has eight main parts of speech, and understanding them helps you write better sentences, catch errors, and understand how language works at a deeper level.

The same word can sometimes play different roles. "Run" can be a verb ("I run every morning") or a noun ("That was a great run"). The part of speech depends on how the word is used in the sentence.

1. Nouns — The Namers

A noun is a word that names a person, place, thing, or idea. "Dog," "school," "Maria," "happiness," and "Tuesday" are all nouns. Nouns are the most common part of speech — they're the subjects and objects that sentences revolve around. Proper nouns (like "Texas" or "Dr. Smith") name specific things and are capitalized. Common nouns (like "state" or "doctor") are general and lowercase.

2. Verbs — The Action Words

A verb tells what the subject does or is. Action verbs describe movement or activity: "jump," "write," "think," "eat." Linking verbs connect the subject to more information: "is," "was," "seem," "become." Every complete sentence needs at least one verb — it's the engine that makes the sentence go.

3. Adjectives — The Describers

An adjective describes or modifies a noun. It answers questions like "what kind?", "how many?", or "which one?" In "the tall, green tree," both "tall" and "green" are adjectives describing the noun "tree." Adjectives add color, detail, and specificity to your writing — the difference between "a dog" and "a massive, fluffy, golden dog."

4. Adverbs — Describing the Action

An adverb modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. It answers "how?", "when?", "where?", or "how much?" Many adverbs end in -ly: "quickly," "carefully," "happily." But not all — "very," "always," "never," "here," and "soon" are also adverbs. In "She sang beautifully," the adverb "beautifully" describes how she sang.

5. Pronouns — The Stand-Ins

A pronoun takes the place of a noun so you don't have to repeat it. Instead of "Maria told Maria's mom that Maria was hungry," you say "Maria told her mom that she was hungry." Common pronouns include "he," "she," "it," "they," "we," "them," "who," and "this." Pronouns make language flow smoothly instead of sounding repetitive.

6. Prepositions — Showing Relationships

A preposition shows the relationship between a noun and another word in the sentence — usually involving location, time, or direction. "The cat is on the table," "We'll meet after school," "She walked through the park." Common prepositions include "in," "on," "at," "to," "from," "with," "between," "under," "above," and "during."

7. Conjunctions — The Connectors

A conjunction joins words, phrases, or clauses together. The most common ones are and, but, and or — you can remember the coordinating conjunctions with the acronym FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so). "I like pizza and pasta." "She's tired but happy." Conjunctions are the glue that holds complex sentences together.

8. Interjections — The Emotion Words

Interjections express sudden emotion or reaction. "Wow!", "Ouch!", "Hooray!", "Oh no!" They're often followed by exclamation marks and can stand alone as their own sentence. Interjections add feeling and personality to writing, but in formal writing, they're used sparingly.

Why Parts of Speech Matter

Understanding parts of speech gives children power over language. When a student knows that adjectives describe nouns, they can instantly make their writing more vivid by adding descriptive words. When they understand that conjunctions connect ideas, they can write longer, more complex sentences. Parts of speech are the grammar building blocks that transform choppy, simple writing into expressive, flowing communication.

Parts of speech knowledge also accelerates reading comprehension. When readers encounter an unfamiliar word, knowing its part of speech from context clues helps them guess its meaning. If a mysterious word appears where a verb should be, the reader knows it describes an action — even without a dictionary.

Where Kids Get Stuck

The trickiest concept is that the same word can be different parts of speech depending on how it's used. "Run" is a verb in "I run fast," but a noun in "She went for a run." "Light" is a noun (turn on the light), an adjective (a light bag), or a verb (light the candle). Teaching children to look at a word's job in the sentence rather than memorizing a fixed label is the key breakthrough.

Another stumbling block is distinguishing adjectives from adverbs. Both describe other words, but adjectives modify nouns ("the tall tree") and adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs ("she ran quickly"). The simplest test: if it describes a noun, it's an adjective. If it describes how, when, where, or to what extent an action happens, it's an adverb.

Children also struggle with prepositions because they're small, abstract words. The classic trick is that a preposition is any word that describes where a squirrel can go in relation to a log: over, under, through, around, beside, between, near, on, in, behind, across — these are all prepositions.

Try This at Home

• Mad Libs — Play Mad Libs together. Asking for "a noun" or "an adjective" reinforces the categories while creating hilarious stories.
• Sentence surgery — Write a plain sentence ("The dog sat.") and add one word at a time: an adjective, an adverb, a prepositional phrase. Watch it grow into "The fluffy golden dog sat quietly on the old porch."
• Word sort game — Write 20 random words on cards. Sort them by part of speech. Discuss tricky words that could belong in multiple categories.
• Color-coded highlighting — Take a paragraph and highlight nouns in blue, verbs in red, adjectives in green, and adverbs in orange. Patterns emerge visually.

For reading support, see: Making Reading Fun for Reluctant Readers.

📝 Practice Parts of Speech

Last reviewed: May 2026