Parts of Speech in English Grammar: PREPOSITIONS, PRONOUNS, CONJUNCTIONS, ARTICLES

Hi.

Welcome to www.engvid.com.

I'm Adam.

In today's video, I'm going to conclude our look at the parts of speech.

Now, I've made a couple other videos about nouns and adjectives, another one about verbs

and adverbs.

Today, we're going to look at pronouns, prepositions, articles, and conjunctions.

Okay?

Again, there is one more.

That's the interjections, like "wow" and "ooh" and "ah".

These are all self-explanatory; I won't look at them.

So, we're going to start looking at pronouns.

Now, again, just before I do that, what are the parts of speech?

These are the categories that every English word falls into.

So, when you have an English sentence, each word belongs to one part of speech, and it's

very important to recognize them so you know how to use them in your writing, in your speaking,

and how to understand them in your reading.

Okay?

So, let's start with the pronouns.

There are different types of pronouns.

There are the personal pronouns, and these are divided into subject pronouns and object

pronouns.

So, "I" is a subject pronoun; it's going to be used in the subject position in a sentence

or in a clause.

Okay?

"I", "you", "he", "she", "it", "they".

The object, just like it sounds, is going to be used in the object position of a clause

or sentence.

"Me", "your", "him", "her", etc.

Sorry.

"Me", "you", "him", "her", "it", "them".

Okay?

So, it's very important to understand the position, the type and position of the personal

pronouns.

And then you have the other pronouns, the adjective pronouns.

And again, very important to remember that these are adjectives.

They will be followed by a noun.

"My house", "my friend", right?

So, this is just an adjective; you still need the noun to go with it.

So, "my", "your", "his", "her", "it's", "their".

Okay?

"Possessive", this is now a noun, so it's used in the same way as the adjective, except

that it's a noun.

So, "This house is mine", "This friend is mine", okay?

And we're using it in a different position.

So, "mine", "yours", "his", "hers", "it's", "theirs".

And "reflexive", so basically just add "self" to all the adjective ones.

"Myself", "yourself", "himself", "herself", etc., etc.

Just remember "themselves", okay?

So, let me write that down.

Don't forget that you're changing it to a plural because "them" is a plural, and "yourselves"

or "yourself", depending.

"Demonstrative pronouns", "this", "that", "these", "those".

These are talking...

When you're talking about pointing at something.

These can be used as adjectives or as nouns, depending on how you're building your sentence.

Then you have "indefinite pronouns", meaning that you're talking about people in general

or things in general or places in general.

"Every", "every person" or "everybody", both of these are pronouns.

"Every", "all", "each", "some", "any".

There are quite a few of these, but they're indefinite, means there's not any particular

one, person, place, thing.

"Relative pronouns", so when you have an adjective clause, the conjunctions that begin the clause,

but that also act as subjects in that clause, in that relative clause, are called "relative

pronouns".

So, "who", "which", "that", etc.

And then "interrogative", when you have a question, "Who did it?"

Right?

So, the "who" is the interrogative pronoun.

So, again, very important to understand the words you're looking at, what part of speech

they are.

Now, a big reason to understand parts of speech is because if you're having any problems with

any one particular word that you're just not sure how it works, if you recognize it's part

of speech, it's also much easier to look it up in a grammar book or online, or to ask

your teacher how this part of speech works in general, right?

And as I mentioned with the other parts of speech, especially with the verbs and with

the adverbs, you should, I highly recommend that you get yourself a very good grammar

book to learn all the different pronouns, how to use them, when to use them, how to

adapt them to whatever context you're working with.

Then we're going to look at articles.

Articles are very straightforward because there's only three of them.

There are only three of them.

There are the...

There's the definite article, "the", and the indefinite articles, "a" or "an".

The difference between "a" or "an" is the word that follows it.

If the word that follows it begins with a vowel, "an".

If it begins with a consonant, "a".

But you also have to be careful.

It has to be a consonant or a vowel sound, right?

So you have "a u f o".

Although "u" is a vowel, the sound is a "y", a "y" is a consonant, so "a u f o".

Then "m r i", "scan".

Now, "an m r i", why?

Because this is an acronym.

We don't say the actual word, so it sounds like "m r i", sort of like that, right?

So you're going with this sound, "m e", "an m r i", so keep that in mind.

Now, definite, the very simple explanation is specific.

Indefinite general.

So, "the house", I know which house we're talking about.

"A house" could be any house.

Now, I know I'm very much simplifying article use.

Articles can be very, very tricky to English learners, but again, you need to get yourself

a good grammar book and learn all the different rules on how to use articles, okay?

But just remember that articles are part of the speech, are a part of speech, and you

need to know how to use them and how to recognize them, when not to use them, etc., okay?

So now let's look at prepositions and conjunctions.

Okay, so now we're going to look at prepositions and conjunctions.

We're going to start with prepositions.

So prepositions, these are the little words that you see all over the sentence, and you

see them in basically every sentence, and they are called... or they are prepositions,

but they are function words.

Each of these prepositions has a function.

Some of them have more than one function, some of them have only one function.

Again, you have to learn how to use them.

So, for example, "in".

"In" has more than one function.

It could be used to talk about place, it could be used to talk about time, for example, okay?

And what I mean by function words, these prepositions help you relate or help the writer, the speaker,

the reader relate events and time, and events and direction, or things and time, things

and place.

So, we have direction, we have method.

So, direction, "to", method, "by", time, "in", "on", "at", place, "in", "on", "at", okay?

So all kinds of different functions and a lot of prepositions.

So, for example, "of", "on", "in", "at", "on", "for", "about", "to", "above", "among", "with".

The list is very long.

Some of them can be very confusing.

So, for example, I know that a lot of students have a problem between "for" and "to".

Now, there's a video on engVid, actually I made a video about the difference between

"for" and "to", which you can watch to understand the difference.

But the point is that you need to study each of these words.

And for those of you who are going to be taking a test, for example, and you need to write,

the prepositions, I've seen so many mistakes, okay?

Make sure you know how to use the prepositions because they can change the meaning of a sentence.

They're small words, but they're very important words.

And again, get a good grammar book that has a lot of exercises that you can learn how

to use these prepositions, okay?

Next, we're going to talk about conjunctions.

So, there are essentially two types of conjunctions.

Coordinating conjunctions, where you're going to be joining two independent clauses, "and",

"but", "so", excuse me, "or", "for", "yet", "nor".

Some people like to remember these by calling it "fanboys".

If that helps you remember them, that's fine.

"For", as a coordinating conjunction, a little bit old-fashioned, not used so much anymore.

You should still know how to use it.

But remember, two independent clauses.

When you want to join an independent clause to a dependent clause or a subordinate clause,

you're going to use a subordinating conjunction, "when", "which", "that", "although", "if".

And remember, subordinating conjunctions are going to be in three types.

You're going to have a noun clause, an adverb clause, or an adjective clause, or a complement,

but again, that's always going to be with "that", okay?

So, which conjunction you're going to use, depending on which type of clause you're going

to use and what the purpose of the clause is, right?

Now, this is all part of - parts of speech.

If you really need help with individual aspects of parts of speech, if you need help with

articles, if you need help with conjunctions, if you need help with verbs and adverbs, keep

in mind that, yes, a good grammar book is very useful, but the best resource on - sorry,

the best resource you possibly have is right here.

What you're doing right now, www.engvid.com.

Let me write that down for you, just in case you're not sure where you are.

Go to www.engvid.com, look for the search box.

On your phone, on your PC, on your laptop, there's a search box at this site.

Type in the part of speech that you want to study, and there is probably at least one

video about this topic.

You want to learn about articles?

We have videos.

You want to learn about conjunctions?

We have videos.

We are here to help you improve your English.

If you - a lot of students ask me, "Where do I start?

Where do I start to learn English?"

Parts of speech is where you start.

Make sure you understand what is a noun.

Make sure you understand what is a verb.

Different types of verbs, different tenses, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, pronouns,

articles, conjunctions.

Make sure that you understand every word that you're going to be using, that you're going

to be hearing, that you're going to be reading.

And we have over a thousand videos to help you with every part of speech, okay?

So go look for these videos, watch them, take the quizzes, ask the questions, learn English,

be better English users.

Now, having said all that, if you have any questions about conjunctions or prepositions

or pronouns or nouns, verbs, adjectives, please go to www.engvid.com.

You can also look for the forum under the video and ask me questions, and I'm very happy

to answer your questions about English.

And there's also a quiz where you can practice recognizing the different parts of speech.

And watch more videos, ask more questions.

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You will get more new videos, beginner, intermediate, advanced, all kinds of topics to help you

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I'll see you again soon with a new lesson.

Bye-bye.