The 9 Parts of Speech

Learn the nine parts of speech with this simple jingle or mnemonic device. It is easy to memorize a sentence or phrase and if you simply use the first letter of each word to remind you of the part of speech. The jingle is: “Very astute and proper names can always impact people.” The first letter of each word stands for, in order: Verb, Adverb, Adjective, Pronoun , Noun, Conjunction, Article, Interjection, Preposition.

Remember nouns as the “naming” word, and verbs as the “doing” word. Nouns name a person, place, or thing. “Mary walked to town.” The nouns in that sentence are “Mary” and “town”. Pronouns rename the noun. “She walked to town.” The pronoun “she” renames “Mary”. “She walked to it.” The pronoun “it” renames “town”. Verbs describe the action in the sentence. The verb in the above sentence is “walked”.

Modify nouns and pronouns with adjectives. Adjectives answer the questions, “What kind?” “Which one?” “How many?” and “How much”. For example: The pretty girl. “Pretty” is the adjective, and it answers the question, “What kind of girl?”. Modify verbs and adjectives with adverbs. Adverbs tell “when, where, how, and to what degree”. For example: “I got your letter yesterday.” (when) or “She ran quickly.” (how)

Conjunctions join words together. Join phrases and clauses with conjunctions.Some examples are: and, but, or, so, nor, for, yet. An easy way to remember these conjunctions is with another mnemonic device: FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so).

Recognize prepositions by their length. Not all prepositions are short, but most of them are – in, at, to, for, of, by, on, up, at, as, with. These are just a few. Prepositions show the relationship of a noun or pronoun to another word in the sentence. Example: “Mary sang a song for the children.” The preposition is “for”, and the prepositional phrase is “for the children.”

Interjections, like their name, interject or interrupt the normal flow of the text with a shout or exclamation such as egad! Or ow! Use articles to indicate which item people are speaking about; they comprise the indefinite ones in ‘a, an’, and the definite ‘the’. Shout it out!