Lesson One, Nouns and Verbs

Starting simple is always good, even if your writing is complex. If you already know this material, read over it anyway and feel smart.

My student's writing is complex and he uses a lot of complicated concepts, so we needed time to identify the concept nouns by their uses in his sentences. Concrete or tangible nouns are easier to pin down than intangible ones.

FIRST LESSON

In order to work on sentence structure and effectiveness, I’d like to make sure you and I have the proper building blocks to speak the same language. Those building blocks are called the parts of speech.

The first two parts of speech we’ll identify are nouns and verbs.

Part 1
Nouns name persons, places, things, ideas, concepts, creeds, etc.

John, America, Duluth, Ford, Catholic or Catholicism, University of Georgia Bill of Rights are all proper names.

Carriage, car, man, boy, religion, city, school, university, gym, church are common names. They don’t name a specific person, place or thing.

Many words can be used in different ways in different sentences.


Part 2
Verbs show action or state of being.
Jump, sing, read, throw, study, practice, run, find, exercise, and shoot are action verbs. Verbs have tenses you use automatically, like jumped, sang, threw, studied, practiced, ran, shot.
Have, has, and had are helping verbs or show possession when they appear without an action verb. May, might, can, could, should, would, will, and shall are all helping verbs.

Is, am, are, was, were, be, been, being are all being verbs since they show no action. Seem, appear, and felt are verbs also.

If you want to do something with this knowledge, select a page you have written or a page in a book. Copy that page so you can mark it up.

On the same page, find the verbs and color them blue, nice bright, easy to spot blue. Include verbs of being and helping verbs listed above. Now mark the nouns with red.

What happens in your sentence? At least one word in a sentence tells you that. Then find the word that tells who or what did the action. That will be a noun or a pronoun.


Want to try this on your own? Send me your answers and I'll grade you. Copy a page and paste in into a document. Highlight your nouns and verbs in color.

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