Knowing the parts of speech matters for the English ACT because many grammar questions depend on how words function in a sentence. In language, parts of speech play a role similar to addition and subtraction in math: they’re basic tools you use constantly.
A part of speech is a way to categorize a word based on how it functions in a sentence. You’ve probably heard most of these categories before. Below are the parts of speech you’ll primarily encounter on the English ACT.
To be clear, the ACT won’t directly ask you to label a word’s part of speech. Instead, it tests whether you can use these categories to make correct grammar and punctuation choices.
The good news is that you don’t need to memorize every possible part of speech. This chapter uses simplified grammar and focuses only on what you need for ACT English.
Let’s start with a part of speech you already know.
You’ve probably heard this definition since elementary school.
Nouns include physical objects such as a football, a cupcake, or a chandelier. They also include animals, people, and organizations. Nouns can also be ideas or 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.
Concepts about nouns will apply directly to the A vs. an chapter and indirectly to the chapters about clauses and Subject-verb agreement.
Understanding verbs is especially important for the ACT. Verbs help you identify clauses, choose correct punctuation, and answer subject-verb agreement and verb tense questions.
A verb is often described as an action word. Many verbs do express actions - words like “run,” “think,” “operate,” and “disintegrate.”
The principal told every student they could skip a day of school if they scored well on state exams.
Look at the example above. How many verbs do you see?
There are three main verbs: “told,” “skip,” and “scored.” Each of these expresses an action.
That definition is useful, but it’s not the whole picture. For the ACT, you also need to recognize linking verbs and conditional verbs.
Linking verbs are words that express a form of “to be,” or show that something exists in a certain state. Common linking verbs include “is,” “was,” “am,” “are,” “were,” “be,” and “been.”
You’ll need to be able to spot these quickly because they often affect clause structure and subject-verb agreement.
Conditional verbs are verbs that let us talk about what’s possible, not just what’s currently true. They include words like “can,” “could,” “might,” “may,” “would,” and “will.”
Let’s see if you can apply what you’ve just learned about verbs.
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.
The first verb is “said.” The second verb phrase is “could be going”: “could” is conditional, “be” is linking, and “going” is the main verb. The final verb is “was” (in “wasn’t”). “Not” is an adverb, not a verb, so it isn’t included.
Verbs show up in many ACT questions. They matter for:
Verbs are also directly related to Subject-verb agreement questions and Verb tense questions, so see those chapters as well.
To correctly identify clauses, you need to correctly identify the subject of a sentence.
One of the most common ways the ACT confuses students about the subject is by using prepositional phrases.
A preposition is a word that expresses location or another relationship between two things. Prepositions are often short words (though not always). Here are a few examples:
There are many more, but this list should give you a sense of what prepositions look like.
Each preposition begins a prepositional phrase. A prepositional phrase starts with a preposition and ends at the next noun, called the object of the preposition.
Now, look at the following sentence. See if you can identify the prepositional phrases.
One of the moms at the ballet recital fell asleep and snored loudly.
Can you spot them?
Hint: there are two of them.
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.” “Of” and “at” are the prepositions, and “moms” and “recital” are the objects of the prepositions.
Here’s where the ACT tries to throw you off. Let’s go back to the example:
One of the moms at the ballet recital fell asleep and snored loudly.
First, identify the verbs: “fell” and “snored.” Next, locate the subject. You might be tempted to say “moms,” but that’s not the subject.
The reason “moms” can’t be the subject is that it’s the object of the preposition “of.” Instead, the subject of the sentence is “One.”
Remember: the object of the preposition (the first noun after a preposition) cannot serve as the subject of the sentence.
This is a classic trick in subject-verb agreement questions. You’ll also use prepositional phrases to avoid identifying clauses incorrectly, which affects most punctuation questions.
Adverbs can be tricky, but what you need for the ACT is fairly straightforward.
Many adverbs (including the ones in the example above) end in “-ly,” but not all do.
For the ACT, the key rule is this: when a sentence begins with an introductory adverb, you usually put a comma after it.
Here are a few more examples of adverbs:
Notice that the last two don’t end in “-ly.” These are a special kind of adverb called a conjunctive adverb. You might know them as transition words. If they come at the beginning of a sentence, they still take a comma after them.
Also, 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.
I cannot, however remember the vehicle’s color.
A. NO CHANGE
B. cannot however remember
C. cannot, however, remember
D. cannot however, remember
Here, the conjunctive adverb “however” modifies the whole sentence, not just the verb phrase “cannot remember,” so it should be set off with commas on both sides as a sentence interrupter.
Therefore, the correct answer is “C.”
It’s that simple.
The big, black, hairy creature dove for cover in the shadow of the trees.
The word “creature” is a noun and has four adjectives describing it. Three are easy to spot: “big,” “black,” and “hairy” describe 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.
A pronoun is a kind of noun. For ACT purposes, pronouns matter because they create opportunities for the test to check whether your sentence is clear and grammatically consistent.
A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun. Look at this sentence:
Sally said she got bored selling all her seashells by the seashore.
The word “she” stands for “Sally.” That’s what a pronoun does. Without pronouns, you’d have to write:
Sally said Sally got bored selling all Sally’s seashells by the seashore.
Pronouns let you refer back to a noun that has already been mentioned so you don’t have to repeat it.
Here are some examples of pronouns:
There are plenty more, but this list should help you start recognizing them.
To do well on the ACT, you also need to know what an antecedent is.
Therefore, in the example above, “Sally” is the antecedent for the pronouns “she” and “her.”
This part of speech has its own question type on the ACT called the pronoun-antecedent question, which we’ll cover later in this course!
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