Why Recognizing the Parts of Speech of Words Is Important

One of the first things we learn in English is the basic parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. Over the years, I’ve had many students who could glibly quote the definition of each, but they couldn’t find an example of one in a sentence. That scares me because recognizing the part of speech of words is important to almost every other action in language.

10 Reasons Identifying Parts of Speech of Words Is Important

These reasons are phrased for reading something that’s already been written, but any aspect of Grammar that applies to reading also applies to writing. So keep that in mind as you go.

1. Identifying the Subject.

The subject of a sentence is always a noun or something that’s acting like a noun (such as a pronoun or a phrase). It’s much easier to find the subject of the sentence if you can tell if something is a noun or not. Especially with complex subjects (I’ll talk about that more in the next one.).

2. Choosing the Correct Verb Tense.

You can’t know what verb tense to use unless you know 1. who/what was doing the action and 2. when it happened. That means you can’t be sure you have the correct verb tense unless you can find the subject (see #1), and you can’t analyze the verb tense unless you can reliably find the verb.

For example, subjects like “a Flock of birds” often confuse people because they make the verb match “birds,” but the subject is really “flock.” Which changes the verb (Birds waddle, but a flock waddles.).

3. Telling Phrases from Clauses.

To identify the phrases and clauses in a sentence (let alone their types), you have to be able to find subjects and verbs. If the group of words has a subject and verb, it’s a clause. If it doesn’t have both, it’s a phrase.

Seem simple? It is – IF you can find subjects and verbs reliably. If you can’t, it’s essentially a guessing game.

By now, you’ve probably noticed a pattern: each part of English relies on the others. Subjects and verbs rely on parts of speech. Phrases and clauses rely on subjects and verbs PLUS other parts of speech. It all keeps building, so if you’re missing that very first building block, you’re in trouble.

4. Identifying What a Word Is Describing.

English isn’t completely consistent about what order words go in. For example:

• Quickly, Meredith ran out the door.
• Meredith ran quickly out the door.
• Meredith quickly ran out the door.
• Meredith ran out the door quickly.

That adverb is all over the place. If I can tell it’s an adverb, though, I know it has to be describing an adjective, verb, or adverb. There are no other adverbs or adjectives in the sentence, that means it must be describing “ran” (or should be).

Admittedly, adverbs are the most flexible in placement, but there are other cases when knowing what a word can describe can help narrow down the options and make the sentence clearer.

It can also help you write a sentence that is either more or less ambiguous. After all, if there is more than one word an adjective or adverb could modify, we usually assume it’s describing the closest one. If writing clearly is important, you need to take that into account. And if you want to leave something open to interpretation, the reverse strategy is valuable.

5. Finding antecedents.

Pronouns can get confusing quickly when you’re talking about multiple people or topics. It’s appallingly easy to accidentally change the antecendent for a pronoun (antecedent = the person or thing the pronoun is being used in place of), which changes the whole meaning of the sentence.

Being able to find nouns and words/phrases acting like nouns makes keeping track of your antecedents much simpler. And, really, why make something harder than it needs to be?

6. Putting Punctuation in the Correct Place(s)

What dictates where punctuation should go? Mostly, clauses and phrases do. We use punctuation to join clauses and phrases together into sentences and show how they relate to each other. Some types of words, also, have punctuation rules, and specific formatting like quotes/speech and lists have their own punctuation rules.

Identifying parts of speech in a sentence helps with most if not all of those punctuation rules.

In other words, you need parts of speech to understand proper punctuation. There are some cheats you can use to try to get by without being able to identify different types of words in a sentence, but those won’t always work. And if you’re going solely by those cheats, you won’t know when you’re wrong or why you’re wrong.

7. Figuring Out If There is a Direct Object.

If you need to find a direct object (maybe to figure out if a verb is transitive or intransitive [Read that article if you want a definition of a direct object]), you need to be able to identify nouns and verbs. The direct object is always a word or phrase that acts as a noun, and it has a very specific relationship to a verb. If you can’t identify nouns and verbs in the sentence, finding a direct object is going to be really hard.

It also helps to be able to recognize prepositions and prepositional phrases since those sometimes get confused with direct objects (but aren’t them).

8. Figuring Out If There Is an Indirect Object.

If you’re thinking “I don’t even know what direct objects are, and now, she’s talking about indirect objects?” don’t worry. You’re not alone. That said, even though it’s not the most vital term to know, understanding it can help you make your writing more correct.

In short, an indirect object is used when the verb action requires a two-step process. The action is done to one thing (the direct object) and received by another thing (the indirect object). For example, “I gave Judy the guitar.” “Guitar” is the direct object (what the action is done to), and “Judy” is the indirect object (the recipient of the action).

To be able to identify indirect objects, you have to be able to recognize nouns, verbs, and prepositions (at minimum).

9. Finding the Objects of Phrases.

More objects?! Yes, there are. It’s not that complicated, though, and being able to break down how a phrase is put together is very useful for all the other items in this list.

As with every other object, the objects of phrases have to be nouns, and phrases follow patterns. For example, preposition phrases = preposition + descriptor + noun.

• to the office
• up the winding staircase
• around my head

The object is the noun part. Every time.

10. Bonus: Filling Out Malapropisms (Like MadLibs)

Last but not least, how can you fill in malapropism games if you don’t know what parts of speech different words are? You wouldn’t want to miss out on a silly story filled with completely out-of-context words, would you? :-p

TL;DR

If you want to write well or pass English Grammar courses, learn to identify the parts of speech being used in sentences. Recognizing the parts of speech of words will make all the other Grammar rules easier to understand and follow.

Seriously, it’s like trying to learn Algebra without mastering addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. It doesn’t work out.