What are parts of speech?

Knowing the parts of speech is critical to raising your English ACT score. After all, parts of speech are the bread and butter of the English (or really any) language. What addition and subtraction are to math, the parts of speech are to language.

We use a part of speech to categorize or classify how a word functions in a sentence. You’ve undoubtedly heard most if not all of these classifications before. If you read below, we’ve listed the parts of speech you’ll primarily encounter on the English ACT.

Nouns
Verbs
Prepositions
Adverbs
Pronouns

Definitions

Part of speech: A grammatical term used to classify the way a word functions in a sentence, such as a noun, pronoun, or verb

To be clear, the ACT certainly will not directly ask you to identify the part of speech on any given word. That would be too easy…

The good news is that means we don’t have to learn every part of speech!

This chapter contains simplified grammar related to parts of speech. In other words, we included only the parts of speech you need to know to ace the ACT English Test.

So, let’s get into it. We’ll start first with a part of speech you’re familiar with.

Nouns

You certainly will remember hearing this from your earliest years in school.

Definitions

Noun: A person, place, thing, or idea

Nouns, therefore, include physical objects such as a football, a cupcake, or a chandelier—this also includes all animals, people, and organizations. Nouns can also be concepts such as fear, ambiguity, or prosperity. Diseases are nouns, kinds of weather are nouns, and the device you’re reading this on is a noun, as are the words used to write it.

Concepts about nouns will apply directly to the A vs. an chapter and indirectly to the chapters about clauses and Subject-verb agreement.

Verbs

Knowing how verbs work is especially vital in raising your ACT score. All language hangs on verbs. So does much of your score!

A verb, you’ll remember, is an action word. Most verbs (but not all) do involve words expressing what things and people can do, words like “run,” “think,” “operate,” “disintegrate” and anything else someone or something might “do.”

Example

The principal told every student they could skip a day of school if they scored well on state exams.

Look at the above example. How many verbs do you see?

(spoiler)

There are three main verbs: “told,” “skip,” and “scored.” Each of these expresses an action.

Definitions

Verb (simplified definition): A word used to describe an action

While that’s often true, it’s not the full picture. Verbs aren’t that simple. There are other types of verbs you need to be able to recognize to be successful on the ACT. These include linking verbs and conditional verbs.

Linking verbs are words that express a form of “to be” or when something simply is “existing” in a certain way. These include “is,” “was,” “am,” “are,” “were,” “be,” “been,” and more.

Reaching your desired score on the ACT will require you to be able to note and identify these verbs on sight. If this is difficult for you still, we recommend simply Googling a list of linking verbs and perusing them until you can spot them on sight.

Definitions

Linking verbs: Words that express a form of “to be” or express that something is existing in a certain way

Examples: is, was, am, are, were, be, been, etc.

Conditional verbs are verbs that allow us to talk not only about the reality of a situation we may be in, but also about possible situations other than reality. They’re created with words like “can,” “could,” “might,” “may,” “would,” and “will,” so these words are also verbs.

Definitions

Conditional verbs: Verbs that allow us to talk not only about the reality of a situation we may be in, but also about possible situations other than reality, e.g., can, could, might, may, would, will, etc.

Verb exercise

Let’s see if you can apply what you’ve just learned about verb parts of speech.

Read the sentence below and see if you can identify the verbs in the sentence.

He said that he could be going to the store later, but he wasn’t sure.

Here’s a hint: there are three.

(spoiler)

said
could be going
wasn’t (or was)

The first is “said.” The second is “could be going.” The “could” is conditional, “be” is a linking, and “going” is the main verb. The final verb is “was” (“not” is an adverb, not a verb, so it’s not included).

Verbs will factor into almost any punctuation question, specifically, semicolons and some colons. More generally, they are used to identify clauses, which factor into most comma questions (except for lists and sentence interrupters).

Additionally, verbs are directly related to Subject-verb agreement questions and Verb tense questions, so see these chapters as well.

Prepositions

In order to correctly identify clauses, you’ll need to correctly identify the subject of a sentence.

The number one way the ACT will confuse you about the subject of a sentence is with prepositional phrases.

A preposition is a word that expresses some kind of location or other relationship between two things. They are usually short words (but not always). The words below are a few examples of prepositions:

at
below
above
around
on
under
beside
for
with
through

There are many, many more, but hopefully, there are enough here to give you the vibe of a preposition. Make a quick Google search if you want to see a more exhaustive list.

Definitions

Preposition: A word that expresses some kind of location or other relationship between two things

Stick with us a little longer on prepositions, and we’ll show you why they’re so important.

Each preposition begins what’s called a prepositional phrase. A prepositional phrase starts with a preposition and ends at the next noun, called the object of the preposition.

Definitions

Prepositional phrase: A phrase that starts with a preposition and ends at the next noun in the sentence

Example: The cat in the alley looks scary.

Prepositions exercise

Now, look at the following sentence. Let’s see if you can identify the prepositional phrases in the sentence below.

One of the moms at the ballet recital fell asleep and snored loudly.

Can you spot them?

Hint: there are two of them.

(spoiler)

Of the moms
At the ballet recital

We have two prepositions (and the prepositional phrases that follow them) in this sentence. The first is “of the moms” and the second is “at the ballet recital.” “At” and “of” are the prepositions, and “moms” and “recital” are the objects of the prepositions, respectively.

Here’s where the ACT will try and throw you off. Let’s go back to our example

One of the moms at the ballet recital fell asleep and snored loudly.

First, identify your verb. In this sentence, the verbs are “fell" and "snored.” Then we should locate the subject of the sentence. You may be tempted to say that “moms” is the subject. It may sound right, but it’s not.

Sidenote

Avoiding the preposition trap

To avoid the object preposition trap we must carefully:

Identify the verb
Identify the subject
Be sure that the subject you picked isn’t the object of a prepositional phrase.
If it is, select a different (and now more accurate) subject.

The reason it’s wrong is that “moms” is too busy being the object of the preposition and therefore can’t be the subject. Instead, the subject of the sentence is “One.”

Remember: An object of the preposition, the first noun after a preposition, cannot serve as the subject of the sentence.

This is a classic trick used in subject-verb agreement questions. You’ll also use prepositional phrases to avoid identifying clauses incorrectly, which applies to most punctuation questions.

Adverbs

Adverbs can be pretty tricky, but what you need to know for the ACT, luckily, is pretty basic.

Definitions

Adverb: A word that modifies (or describes) a verb, an adjective, or another adverb

Example: Truthfully, I only hesitantly made the phone call.

Most of them, such as all three in the example above, end in “-ly.”

For the ACT, all you’ll really need to know about adverbs is that when a sentence begins with an introductory adverb, a comma goes after it. A few examples should suffice:

Adverb examples

Here are a few more examples of adverbs:

Truthfully, he looked a little on the homeless side.
Quietly, she admitted her wrongdoing.
Therefore, you will not dispute my decision.
However, I cannot remember the vehicle’s color.

Observe that those last two don’t have the characteristic “-ly” at the end of the word. That’s because these are a special kind of adverb called a conjunctive adverb. You might know them better as transition words. Just be aware that these also require a comma after them if they come at the beginning of a sentence. If adverbs come in the middle of the sentence and modify the entire sentence, they should be set off by commas as a sentence interrupter.

Adverb exercise

I cannot, however remember the vehicle’s color.

A. NO CHANGE
B. cannot however remember
C. cannot, however, remember
D. cannot however, remember

(spoiler)

Here, the conjunctive adverb “however” is modifying the whole sentence, not just the verb “cannot remember,” and should be set off with commas on both sides as a sentence interrupter.

Therefore, the correct answer is “C.”

Adjective

Definitions

Adjective: A word that modifies, or describes, a noun or proper noun

It’s that simple.

Adjective example

The big, black, hairy creature dove for cover in the shadow of the trees.

The word “creature” is a noun and has four adjectives to describe, or modify, it. Three of them are pretty easy to spot: “big,” "black,” and “hairy” all modify what kind of creature it is. The last one is an article adjective “the.”

There is only one type of question on the ACT that requires knowledge of adjectives, and it’s the Adjectives of equal/unequal weight question.

Pronoun (and antecedent)

A pronoun is a kind of noun, and for our purposes here, they provide the opportunity for the ACT folks to try to trick you once again. A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun. Check out the following sentence:

Pronoun example

Sally said she got bored selling all her seashells by the seashore.

The word “she” stands for “Sally,” right? That’s what a pronoun does. If we didn’t have pronouns, we would have to say:

Sally said Sally got bored selling all Sally’s seashells by the seashore.

And between you and me, that’s just a little too much Sallying going on. Pronouns allow us to refer to a word that’s already been brought up so that we don’t have to repeat it so often. The following are examples of pronouns:

he/she/it
we/us
they/them
hers/his/theirs
himself/herself/themselves
everyone/everybody/everything
anyone/anybody
this/that/those

There are plenty more, of course, but this should help you start to identify them.

To ace the ACT, along with pronouns, you also need to know what antecedents are.

Definitions

Antecedent: A word that a pronoun refers to or replaces

Therefore, in the above example, “Sally” is the antecedent for the pronouns “she” and “her.”

This part of speech has its own question on the ACT called the pronoun-antecedent question, which we’ll cover later in this course!