Miss Hasler's English Class: 1

Good morning, children – my name is Miss Hasler and I am going to be your English teacher. Now, I don’t... STOP fiddling with your pigtails, you at the back! I’ll have no fiddling in my class! Now, I don’t expect everyone’s work to be perfect all of the time, but I do expect you all to try your best. I will always praise a pupil who makes a real effort.

And of course I also expect decorum at all times: schoolchildren should always be well-behaved and respectful. Any misbehaviour, from any pupil, will be punished. Look over at that corner next to the map on the wall, all of you. Do you see that hard wooden stool with the dunce’s cap on it? That’s where you will sit if you are naughty. And yes, you will have to wear that silly cap for the whole time you are in disgrace. Especially naughty behaviour will earn the pupil in question a spanked bottom – over my knee, in front of the entire class – prior to corner time. So if you don’t want to spend a lesson facing the wall with your little bottom red and sore (and I’m sure none of you do) you will make sure to behave yourselves.

Now. Pencils and jotters at the ready, and pay attention. You may of course copy down what I write on the board. Remember to raise your hand if you have a question. Sit up straight, Harry!

English is a rich, complex language with lots of rules and lots of tricky words, and it might sometimes seem daunting. But using it well isn’t really about knowing fancy words: it’s about expressing what you want to say clearly. A well-written piece – that is, an easily read one – is always much better than a muddled piece peppered with impressive-sounding words. So you should always aim, above all else, for clarity.

It is vital, then, to get the fundamentals right. You wouldn’t expect to win a chess tournament if you didn’t know how the ‘horsey piece’ moved, would you? So it is with English: make sure you understand the basics, and building from there becomes much easier.

Today we will look at four of the basic types of word in English: nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. These types of word have different names because the words that belong to them have different functions. Let’s use something else to make the idea clearer. Let’s substitute animals for words. Birds, fish, mammals and reptiles are all types of animal that are different from each other, aren’t they? That’s why we call them by different names. It’s just the same with nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs (and all the other types of word).

So what are the functions of our word types?

Nouns are ‘naming’ words. That is, they include all the words we use as names for things and people. Examples of nouns are bicycle, mountain, chocolate and Elizabeth.

Verbs are ‘doing’ words. Cry, hop, write and spank are all verbs.

Adjectives are ‘describing’ words, like hot, fast, blue and proud.

Adverbs, as the name suggests, are a combination of adjective and verb. These words are used to provide extra detail about an action (a verb) by describing it (like an adjective). Smartly, happily, roughly and carelessly are all adverbs. Adverbs are always used in connection with verbs. That is, they need verbs in order to make sense. “Harry smiled happily” consists of noun-verb-adverb. If you take the verb away, and leave just the noun and the adverb, the sentence doesn’t make sense: “Harry happily.”

There are sub-types of each of these main types – just as there are sub-types of most other things, like cars or shoes or cakes – but we don’t need to worry about those today.

Let’s write an example sentence using words from each of our four types:

Elizabeth walked quickly as she was worried about the rain.

Now let’s identify the words that belong to each type:

Elizabeth (noun) walked (verb) quickly (adverb) as she was worried (adjective) about the rain (noun).

Just to reiterate the point that adverbs go with verbs, let’s take the verb out of our sentence and see if it still makes sense:

Elizabeth quickly as she was worried about the rain.

It doesn’t make sense, does it? No. You’re right to shake your heads. Julie, stop shaking that girl’s head for her.

Exercise 1
Think of five nouns, five verbs, five adjectives and five adverbs. Write them neatly in your jotter.

Exercise 2
Write a sentence with a noun and a verb in it. An example might be “The cat yawned.” Next, write one with a noun, a verb and an adjective. For example, “Jenny wore a blue dress.” Finally, try to write one with a noun, a verb, an adjective and an adverb. “The red car went by noisily.”

Homework
Write a little piece about anything you like. Try to use each of our word types (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) in your piece. They don’t all have to be in the same sentence. Be careful with your spelling – too many mistakes and you will have to see me for a personal lesson. Remember to hand your homework in to me for marking.