help with literacy please?

Question

hiya can any of you lovely people explain to me what verbs, passive verbs, nouns, pronouns etc are please?
i am just starting a literacy course and am a tad rusty.... ok I am clueless!
thanks!

crikey!! lots of information!! it is going to eb very hard to pick a best answer when i am allowed!
cheers for all your help guys, really appreciate it, think i will jot some down and re read as still tad confusing :)

Answer 1

noun= a person,place,or thing Fred, Chicago, cat

verbs are words which show action..Fred RUNS and CATCHES (the ball) Chicago IS in Illinois.
I may be wrong on this but I believe passive verbs indicate that something is being acted upon. The house IS BEING painted.

Pronouns are words which take the place of nouns---he she it we I you, they them

There are also transitive and intransitive verbs
A transitive verb always needs a direct object, as in "Fred catches the ball" Sally drives her car. The cat catches mice.

In my first example of verbs," Fred runs" the verb "runs" is intransitive because it does not take a direct object.
But if Fred runs the train, then "runs" is transitive.

Now that I have you thoroughly confused, have a nice day. and good luck with your class.

Answer 2

Well done. I wish more people would care about their grammar. I hope you do well. Here is a list, which I hope will help you in your studies.

A Verb is a word indicating action or state - to show that an action is taking place.

An Adverb is a word that modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, or a sentence, e.g. "happily", "very" or "frankly".

A Passive Verb is expressing an action done., as in "we were given work to do."

A Noun is a word or group of words used as the name of a class of people, places or things, or of a particular place or thing.

A Proper Noun is the name of something particular and normally starts with a Capital letter.

An Indefinite Article is a word such as "a" or "an" that designates a noun referring to something that has not been mentioned before and is simply any one of its kind. e.g. "Choose a book and write a review of it."

A Pronoun is a word that substitutes for a noun or noun phrase, such as "I, you, them,which,myself, anybody."

Answer 3

Hiya!

I'll try and explain in an easy, non-grammar book headache way!!!

The basics are:

A verb is an action: run, cry, jump,sell etc.

A passive verb is when the verb is being done to something/one.

E.G Diane hit Sam

Hit is the verb.

Sam was hit by Diane

This is an example of a passive verb.

Pronouns are he/she/it/they etc.

Prepositions are joining words in a sentence e.g. because, in, at, on, etc.

If you need more help, let me know!!!

Answer 4

On one hand it seems like a crock, but on the other hand it's somewhat understandable. The key, I think, is that you'd have to teach it from a literary standpoint and not force any particular interpretation. I don't know much about Chrsitian denominations and such, but I could see a Catholic not wanting a Baptist interpretation (or whatever) to be presented to his kids in school. From a literary standpoint, though, it seems like just reading the Bible and discussing main themes or historical points would be OK; the kids can ask questions and develop their own answers, and ask their parents for additional religious input. The other argument to be made, I suppose, is "...go to church or Bible Study - not public school - if you want to learn the Bible." ....So it's settled in my mind. If Bible literacy classes were to be taught in school, I think it's stupid for Ministers to oppose it. They've got their respective flock every Sunday to tend to; they can provide whatever supplemental information they deem necessary then, right?

Answer 5

Okay, basic parts of speech:

Articles: a, an and the. A and An are indefinite articles (where we're talking about something general). The is a definite article where there is usually only one.

Noun: a word that describes a person (you, me, JFK, the Washington Redsocks), place (Palm Spring, Earth, McDonalds), thing (a pen, an apartment building, or a duckbilled platypus) or idea (freedom, joy, democracy). Like, my apartment could be a thing or a place. Motley Crue could be a thing or a plural person.

Singular = One (pen)
Plural = More than one (pens).

Verb: a word that describes an action (like jump) or a state of being (be, have, want, etc.). An active verb is where someone is doing something (like jumping). A passive verb is where something is just happing, like a situation, (like have, want and be). There's no action. This should not be confused with 'passive' voice, where there is an action verb, but we no longer say 'who' is doing the action, either because we don't know, or it doesn't matter.

(active voice: I washed dishes)
(passive voice: The dishes were washed).


Adjective: a word that describes a noun. (big, blue, happy)

Adverb: a word that describes a verb or an adjective, typically answering the question 'How?' (very, happily). Often ends in -ly. How did he run? Happily. How big was it? very.

Proper noun: a noun that is the name of something: like Matthew or America (almost always capitalized - ee cummings being a weird exception!)

Pronoun: a noun that stands in for person or thing: I, me, you, he, him, she, her, it, they, them, we, us.

Possessive noun/pronoun: Matthew's, his, hers, mine, yours, theirs, ours.

Possessive adjectives: Matthew's, his, her, my, your, our, their, its

Gerund: an -ing verb used as a noun: Swimming. Swimming is fun. (gerund - verb - adjective)

infinitive: the base form of a verb, often preceded by 'to'. I like to swim.

Preposition: words that indicate a direction or location, either physical or figurative: to, from, for, on, out, in, under, over, beside, about, around, etc.

Basic Verb Tenses: (names may vary)
Present Simple (I play baseball).
Present Continuous (I'm playing baseball).
Present Perfect (I have played baseball)
Present Perfect Continous (I have been playing baseball).

Past Simple (I played baseball).
Past Continous (I was playing baseball).
Past Perfect (I had played baseball)
Past Perfect Continuous (I had been playing baseball).

Future Simple (I will play baseball).
Future Continuous (I will be playing baseball).
Future Perfect (I will have played baseball).
Future Perfect Continuous (I will have been playing baseball).

Present Continuous with Future Meaning (I'm playing baseball tomorrow).
Present Continuous with Future Meaning using 'going to' (I'm going to play baseball).

Real Conditional (If it rains, I won't plays basebal).
Unreal Conditional (If it had rained, I wouldn't have played baseball)

Causatives: make, let, have someone do something.

Learn the English Phonemic Script (a special alphabet that describes how words sound). Understanding how we make sounds (what parts of our mouth we use, how we use our lips to make vowels, what part of the throat sounds come from, voiced vs. unvoiced letter-sounds) can help us understand grammar, because there is often a reason for grammar related to pronunciation.

For example, in regular past tense (adding d or ed to make something past tense) voiced consonants and vowels (which are all voiced) end in D sound. Unvoiced consonants end in a T sound (even though the letter is D). Consonants D and T end in an ID sound (though spelled with ED). That's one example.

Good luck.

Answer 6

Nouns - Any word used as a name. (i.e. CAT, DOORKNOB, SKY).
Proper Nouns - Any word used as a name for a person or a country, i.e. (BARRY WHITE, INDIA.)
Verbs - Any word used to describe an action, essentially something you do. i.e. (JUMP, RUN, KICK)
Passive Verbs - Any word used to describe an action that is not necessarily visible i.e. (THINK, SEE, CONSIDER)
Adjectives - Any word describing a noun (BIG cat, SHINY doorknob, BLUE sky.)
Adverbs - Any word describing a verb (jump QUICKLY, run SLOWLY, kick POWERFULLY)
Pronouns - Any word that can replace a noun, to shorten a sentence or make it more interesting ("The cat sat on the mat". Pronouns can replace 'cat' and 'mat'. "SHE sat on IT.)

Answer 7

verbs are 'doing words'
nouns are the names of places or people
prounouns are a mystery to me!! - good luck with the course x

Answer 8

verbs are ' action or doing words'
nouns are the names of places or people or animals
pronouns are used instead of nouns e.g he, she, we, i, they, them, e.t.c .

Answer 9

'Oljedsami' is pretty right, except for passive & active verbs.
John painted the house. (active)
The house was painted by John. (passive)

Answer 10

This site will tell you everything you want to know about parts of speech.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parts_of_speech