There are nine parts of speech everyone uses to communicate in English. Parts of speech are the type of words that exist in dictionaries. When talking, speakers of English stress the most important words in sentences. These words are usually nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. They are called content words. They express the main idea of the content of the phrase or sentence. They are the ones that carry the message. Less important words are articles, pronouns, possessives, prepositions, auxiliaries and conjunctions. They are called function words. These are generally not stressed. They connect the content words to form grammatically correct sentences.
NOUNS name anything that has a definite shape, substances, ideas, places, people and events.
VERBS name the action NOUNS perform.
ADJECTIVES identify qualities or types of NOUNS.
ADVERBS modify the VERBS and intensify ADJECTIVES.
During conversations, successful listeners of English use content words to figure out the message, therefore it is important that the speaker learns how to stress the content words correctly and reduce the function words. This contributes to the understanding of the language.
The following is an example of a message using all the content words. The words left out are the function words.
Read the words aloud in the paragraph below without filling in the blanks. The letters in bold indicate the stressed syllable. Can you make the sense out of it?
Kathy lost handbag
restaurant careless.
placed
handbag the floor. finished eating
completely forgot
left restaurant.
This is a message using only content words, so it was quite easy to understand its content.
Now, fill in the blanks. Choose appropriate words from the dropdown boxes to make every sentence complete and correct. The words you need are function words. They do not contribute to the message in very important ways. You have to follow the S-V-O pattern for proper sentence formation.
Check your grammatical answers here.
Read it aloud again and make sure to stress the content words only.
This site is being developed and maintained by Art Vazquez
