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Unit two of this course covered grammar and, more specifically, parts of speech. Sentences are made up of words. The simplest of sentences have a subject (noun) and a verb. Once sentences are more complex than this, however, it is important to recognize how the different words within a sentence function. To do this, we must recognize the parts of speech of each word in the sentence.
The easiest way to explain the parts of speech is with a sentence. Let's break down the sentence, "The little, old lady walked slowly across the street by herself" word by word. "The" is a definite article, we use "the" instead of "a" because we are talking about a specific, little, old lady. "Little" and "old" are both adjectives. From our course, we know that these adjectives should be in this order because of the basic rule that the order of adjectives should be by: size->age->color->material->noun. "Lady" is a noun and the subject of the sentence. "Walked" is a past simple tense verb and it represents the action of the lady. "Slowly" is an adverb of manner and it describes how the woman walked. "Across" is a preposition and it explains the relationship of the walking woman to the street. "The" is another definite article. "Street" is a countable noun--you can count streets. "By" is another preposition and "herself" is a reflexive pronoun as it refers back to the lady.
Each of these parts of speech can be further analyzed and broken down. For instance, "walked" is intransitive as it cannot be followed immediately by an object. "Across the street" is a prepositional phrase and it explains where the woman was walking. We could cut this prepositional phrase out completely and replace it with another prepositional phrase to explain another way in which the old lady was walking. Instead of "across the street"let's add, "through the tunnel." The little, old lady walked slowly through the tunnel by herself. Now the little old lady is walking in a completely different area. It is important that we, as teachers, recognize how sentences are constructed in English, so that we can more effectively teach our students how to speak. Learning how to teach parts of speech is the first step we must take to further our recognition of grammatical principles.
