ADVANCED ENGLISH GRAMMAR The Superior English Grammar Guide Packed With Easy to Understand Examples, Practice Exercises and Brain Challenges Wendy Wilson and James H. Barlow Copyright 2020 © by Wendy Wilson and James H. All rights reserved The content contained within this book may not be reproduced, duplicated, or transmitted without direct written permission from the author or the publisher. Under no circumstances will any blame or legal responsibility be held against the publisher, or author, for any damages, reparation, or monetary loss due to the information contained within this book.
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The content within this book has been derived from various sources. Please consult a licensed professional before attempting any techniques outlined in this book. By reading this document, the reader agrees that under no circumstances is the author responsible for any losses, direct or indirect, which are incurred as a result of the use of the information contained within this document, including, but not limited to, errors, omissions, or inaccuracies. TA B L E OF CONTENTS C H A PTE R 1: T HE PARTS O F S PEECH.
1 THE FIVE TYPES OF NOUNS. 4 TYPES OF PRONOUNS. 21 OTHER TYPES OF ADJECTIVES. 25 USING THE PARTS OF SPEECH.
26 TEST HE PARTS OF SPEECH. 27 CHA PTE R 2 : PHR ASE S. 2 9 WHAT IS A PHRASE?. 34 A FEW WORDS ABOUT APPOSITIVES.
37 CHA PTE R 3 : SE NT E NC E S. 3 9 WHAT IS A SENTENCE?. 43 OBJECTS OF A PREPOSITION. 46 THE FOUR KINDS OF SENTENCES.
49 C H A PTE R 4 : TYPE S O F SE NTEN CE STRUCTURES. 52 RUN-ON SENTENCES. 53 TYPES OF SENTENCE STRUCTURES. 56 COMPOUND-COMPLEX SENTENCE.
58 A VARIETY OF SENTENCE PATTERNS. 59 TEST TYPES OF SENTENCE STRUCTURES. 61 C H A PTE R 5: C L AU SE S. 63 WHAT IS A CLAUSE?.
71 C H A PTE R 6: SPEC IAL ISSU E S WI TH PRONOUN S. 72 PERSONAL PRONOUN PROBLEM: CASES—IS IT I OR ME?. 72 DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS AND ADJECTIVES: THIS, THAT, THESE, THOSE. 76 INTERROGATIVE PRONOUN ISSUES.
78 WHOSE OR WHO’S?. 80 INDEFINITE PRONOUNS: SINGULAR OR PLURAL?. 86 TEST SPECIAL ISSUES WITH PRONOUNS. 88 CHA PTE R 7: SPEC IAL ISSU E S WI TH VERBS.
92 USING THE PAST PERFECT. 92 IRREGULAR VERB FORMS. 93 VERBS OF BEING. 95 ADJECTIVES AFTER LINKING VERBS.
96 PRONOUNSAFTER LINKING VERBS. 97 VOICE: ACTIVE OR PASSIVE?. 97 WHAT IS SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD, ANYWAY?. 99 COMMANDS AND RECOMMENDATIONS.
99 THINGS THAT ARE NOT TRUE. 99 USING STRONG VERBS. 100 TEST SPECIAL ISSUES WITH VERBS. 102 CHA PTE R 8 : COMMAS.
104 TO COMMA OR NOT TO COMMA: THAT IS THE QUESTION. 105 BETWEEN TWO ADJECTIVES. 108 OTHER COMMON USES FOR COMMAS. 110 DON’T PUT COMMAS HERE!.
118 C H A PTE R 9: PU NCTUAT IO N (EXCEPT COM M AS). 121 TIPS FOR USING EXCLAMATION POINTS CORRECTLY. 122 QUESTION MARKS WITH QUOTATIONS. 124 COMPOUND SENTENCES WITH SERIES OR OTHER COMMAS.
125 PARENTHESES AND BRACKETS. 133 WORDS USED AS THEMSELVES. 133 LETTERS AND NUMBERS USED AS THEMSELVES. 134 FOREIGN TERMS AND PHRASES.
134 USING ITALICS OR QUOTES FOR TITTLES. 135 OTHER USES FOR QUOTES. 135 QUOTATION MARKS WITH OTHER PUNCTUATION. 136 SINGLE QUOTATION MARKS.
139 OTHER USES FOR QUOTATION MARKS.141 CHAPTER 10: SOME REALLY IMPORTANT GRAMMAR ISSUES. 143 RUN-ON SENTENCES. 145 USING AND, OR, NEITHER, EITHER BETWEEN SUBJECTS. 147 PRONOUN/ANTECEDENT AGREEMENT.
148 SENTENCES THAT BEGIN WITH THERE. 149 SINGULAR NOUNS THAT LOOK PLURAL. 149 A QUIRKY LITTLE ISSUE. 153 FORMING COMPARATIVES AND SUPERLATIVES.
154 TWO-SYLLABLE ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS. 159 WORDS THAT ALREADY END IN -S. 162 PARALLEL STRUCTURE IN LISTS. 163 USING NUMBERS: WHEN TO SPELL THEM OUT.
167 APOSTROPHES IN PLURALS. 169 LET’S BE CLEAR: AVOIDING VAGUENESS. 170 THE LONELY WHICH. 171 CAN I DO THESE THINGS?.
173 START A SENTENCE WITH AND, SO, OR BUT. 174 END A SENTENCE WITH A PREPOSITION. 174 SPLIT AN INFINITIVE. 175 USE THEY AS A SINGULAR.
175 TEST IMPORTANT GRAMMAR ISSUES. 176 CHA PTE R 1 1 : CAPITAL IZ AT IO N. 178 THE BASIC RULES. 178 MORE CAPITALIZATION RULES.
182 LETTER/EMAIL SALUTATIONS AND CLOSINGS. 183 SOME “COMMON” PROPER NOUNS. 187 CHAPTER 1 THE PARTS OF SPEECH The parts of speech are the categories into which each word in the language fits. In a sentence, each part of speech plays a different purpose, and certain words, depending on their use in a specific sentence, may be more than one part of speech.
These parts of speech are the language’s building blocks. When individuals refer to the parts of speech, they mean these eight categories that can be placed in all words. Here are the eight parts of speech: • Noun • Pronoun • Verb • Adjective (and Articles) • Adverb • Preposition • Conjunction • Interjection NOUNS A noun is a person, place, thing, idea, or emotion. Here are some nouns: sun, girl, dog, happiness, California, book, doctor, rain, religion, family, Susie, seashore.
• People: Susie, girl, doctor, family. • Places: California, seashore. • Things: book, dog, sun, rain. • Ideas or emotions: happiness, religion.
You can check to see if something is a noun: Usually, you can put the words a, an, the, or my before nouns. Examples: the sun, a dog, a girl, a religion, my happiness. This doesn’t work as well with words that start with capital letters, such as California or Suzie. However, most words that start with ADVANCED ENGLISH GRAMMAR 1 capital letters are nouns anyway.
Remember that you don’t have to be able to see it for it to be a noun. You can’t see ideas or emotions, but they are still things. EXERCISE 1 RECOGNIZING NOUNS Identify all the nouns in the following sentences: 1. Peter gave his cake to his younger brother.
Do you know where this idea came from in the first place? 3. I still collect stamps, but I have a new hobby: making scrapbooks of photos I have taken. The department has had five meetings in the past month. He was sad until he learned he had won the award; then he was filled with happiness.
The words above are all people, places, things, ideas, or emotions. THE FIVE TYPES OF NOUNS There are five categories of nouns: • Common nouns: Are regular nouns that do not start with capital letters, such as happiness, boy, desk, and city. • Proper nouns: Are the nouns that start with capital letters. They are specific people, places, things, or ideas such as Florida, Buddhism, Joe, and Thanksgiving.
• Concrete nouns: Are nouns that represent things you can see, hear, smell, taste, or feel. Most nouns are concrete. Concrete nouns are either common or proper too. Concrete nouns include grass, paper, perfume (you can smell it), air (you can feel it), Susie, and Golden Gate Bridge.
• Abstract nouns: are the nouns that represent ideas or emotions; you cannot perceive them with your senses. Religion, happiness, anger, and Buddhism fall into this category. • Collective nouns: are nouns that represent a group of things or people without being plural (although they can also be made plural). Family, group, orchestra, audience, flock, 2 ADVANCED ENGLISH GRAMMAR bunch, and herd fall into this category.
These nouns become important when we discuss noun and verb agreement. Most nouns can be counted (girls, pencils, stars), but some cannot be (salt, wisdom, sand, beauty). EXERCISE 2 RECOGNIZING TYPES OF NOUNS Find the type of noun asked for in the following sentences. There is only one noun of the type asked for.
Find the proper noun: We went to New York City on our vacation last summer. Find the concrete noun: You need to add more soil before you finish. Find the abstract noun: You seem to know all the rules of this game! 4. Find the collective noun: The band played all day in the gymnasium.
Find all the nouns of the type requested in each series: 1. Find all the proper nouns: Bob, brother, summer, Ireland, Buddhism, decision 2. Find all the abstract nouns: idea, book, school, dog, sadness, shirt, Christianity, Empire State Building, hunger 3. Find all the collective nouns: group, committee, boys, tribe, happiness, bunch, clocks, collection PRONOUNS Pronouns take the place of nouns.
For example, compare these two sentences: Mary baked Mary’s famous lasagna for dinner. Mary baked her famous lasagna for dinner. Her is a pronoun. It is used in the second sentence to take the place of Mary, so we don’t have to repeat Mary.
Doesn’t the second sentence sound better? Some common pronouns are: I, you, he, she, them, they, we, us, ADVANCED ENGLISH GRAMMAR 3 him, her, and it. ANTECEDENTS An antecedent is the word the pronoun is standing in for. In the sentence above, Mary is the antecedent of her. An antecedent can also be a pronoun.
Pronouns can stand in for other pronouns, as in the following sentence: He showed the manager his report. (His and he are the same person. He is the antecedent.) In the following sentence, there are no antecedents present in the sentence: He showed the manager her report. Obviously, he is showing the manager the report of a female (her), not his own.
We would probably find the antecedents in previous sentences in the text if we had them. However, we can tell that he is not the antecedent for her because they don’t agree in gender. Pronouns must agree in gender and number (singular or plural) with their antecedents. Make sure that when you write, your antecedents are clear, so that you don’t confuse the reader.
They should be able to tell who is who. (See? In the previous sentence they is unclear. Does they refer to the word antecedents or the word reader?) Unclear antecedent: Mary and Jenny went to visit her mother. (Whose mother?) EXERCISE 3 PRONOUNS AND ANTECEDENTS Identify the antecedent for the italicized pronoun.
June brought her books back to the library. I baked you a cake, but I burned it. They came to the party and brought their costumes. I want to take singing lessons, but my mother cannot afford to pay for them.
Bob loves his younger brother, who worships him. 4 ADVANCED ENGLISH GRAMMAR TYPES OF PRONOUNS Pronouns can be a little tricky. There are six different types of pronouns. Personal pronouns: Are the most commonly used pronouns.
Here is the complete list: • First Person: I, me, my, mine (singular); we, us, our, ours (plural) • Second Person: You, your, yours (both singular and plural) • Third Person: He, him, his, she, her, hers, it, its (singular); they, them, their, theirs (plural) EXERCISE 4 PERSONAL PRONOUNS Identify only the personal pronouns in each sentence. There may be more than one. I didn’t tell him about the new idea I had. My brother told me who is coming to my party.
We students are having a carwash to support our school. The story about the accident was so terrible that I didn’t believe it at first. Don’t forget to bring your bathing suit when we go to the beach. Demonstrative pronouns point things out: There are only four of them: this, that, these, and those.
