Parts of speech and articles

The eight parts of speechOften examined

Every word in a sentence does a job. The job decides its part of speech. English has eight parts of speech: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection. Articles (a, an, the) are a special kind of adjective, often called determiners, and they are taught with this unit.

Nouns: kindsOften examined

A noun is a naming word. It names a person (Quaid-e-Azam, teacher), a place (Karachi, school), a thing (bat, pen), an animal (lion), a quality or feeling (honesty, anger), an action (arrival, decision) or an idea (freedom).

Proper noun

The name of a particular person, place, day, month, organisation, book or event. It always begins with a capital letter: Imran, Murree, Friday, August, FBISE, the Quran, Eid ul Fitr.

Common noun

A name shared by every member of a class: boy, city, river, book, festival. It has a capital letter only at the start of a sentence.

Collective noun

The name of a group taken as one whole: team, class, army, jury, family, flock, herd, pack.

Abstract noun

The name of a quality, state, feeling, action or idea that we cannot see or touch: courage, honesty, childhood, poverty, anger, freedom, wisdom, laughter, decision.

Concrete noun

The name of something we can see, touch, hear, smell or taste: book, water, Ali, music, smoke. Proper, common, collective and material nouns are all concrete.

Material noun

(Older books list it separately.) The name of a substance from which things are made: gold, wood, cotton, iron, milk, rice. Material nouns are usually uncountable.

Countable noun

A noun that can be counted and has a plural: one book, two books; a student, many students.

Uncountable (mass) noun

A noun that cannot be counted, has no plural and does not take a/an: advice, information, furniture, water.

Compound noun

A noun made of two or more words: classroom, toothpaste (closed); mother-in-law, passer-by (hyphenated); bus stop, post office (open).

How abstract nouns are formed

Collective nouns to learn

FBISE asks you to "insert a correct collective noun". The group word must match the members. Learn these pairs.

Collective nouns and agreement

• When the group acts as one unit, use a singular verb and "it/its": "The team has won its first match." "The committee has given its report."
• When the members act separately or disagree, use a plural verb and "they/their": "The jury were divided in their opinions." "The family are arguing among themselves."
• Some group nouns are always plural and never take -s: people, police, cattle, poultry, clergy, gentry, vermin. "The police have arrested the thief." "Cattle are grazing in the field."
• Do not mix: "The team is ready and they are confident" mixes singular and plural. Choose one.

Countable and uncountable nouns

Compound nouns and their plurals

• Closed compounds add -s at the end: classrooms, toothbrushes, sunflowers, spoonfuls, handfuls.
• Hyphenated compounds make the main word plural: mothers-in-law, sons-in-law, passers-by, runners-up, commanders-in-chief, lookers-on.
• Open compounds pluralise the last (main) word: bus stops, post offices, swimming pools, cricket grounds.

Nouns: gender and number

Gender

Masculine gender

Male: man, boy, king, lion, father.

Feminine gender

Female: woman, girl, queen, lioness, mother.

Common gender

Either male or female: child, student, teacher, doctor, friend, parent, cousin, person, baby.

Neuter gender

Neither male nor female (things without life): book, table, stone, mobile.

Number: how plurals are formed

Nouns that break the pattern

• Always plural (no singular form): scissors, trousers, spectacles, jeans, pliers, tongs, thanks, goods, riches, premises, surroundings, outskirts, belongings, clothes, alms. "My trousers are new." For one item say "a pair of trousers".
• Plural in form, singular in meaning: news, mathematics, physics, economics, athletics, measles, mumps, billiards. "Mathematics is my favourite subject." "The news is true."
• Plural in meaning without -s: people, police, cattle, poultry, clergy. "The people are happy."
• Number + noun before another noun stays singular: a five-rupee note, a ten-year-old boy, a two-hour journey, a three-day match. But: "The boy is ten years old."
• Dozen, hundred, thousand, score after a number: two dozen eggs, five hundred rupees, three thousand people (not "dozens" or "hundreds").
• Hair for the hair on the head is uncountable: "Her hair is long." "Hairs" means single strands: "There are two hairs in my soup."
• "One of the ..." is followed by a plural noun: "Babar is one of the best batsmen in the world" (not "best batsman").

Nouns: possessive case and functions

Case shows the job of a noun or pronoun in a sentence. Nouns have three cases: nominative (subject), objective (object) and possessive (owner). A noun changes its form only in the possessive case; pronouns change in all three (I, me, my).

Forming the possessive case

• Things without life normally use of, not 's: "the leg of the table" (not "the table's leg"), "the roof of the house".
• But 's is used with time, distance, weight and value: a week's holiday, two hours' drive, a stone's throw, a kilo's weight, ten rupees' worth; with personified things and places: the nation's pride, Pakistan's economy, the sun's rays; and in fixed phrases: for God's sake, at his wit's end, to one's heart's content.
• Double possessive: "a friend of my father's" = one of my father's friends.
• Possessive pronouns never take an apostrophe: its, hers, ours, yours, theirs. "It's" means "it is".

Functions of a noun

A noun (or noun phrase) can do any of these jobs. FBISE calls a noun that renames another noun an appositive.

Pronouns: kindsOften examined

A pronoun is a word used in place of a noun so that we do not repeat it: "Sara lost her book, so she borrowed mine." The noun that a pronoun replaces is its antecedent (Latin: "going before"). In "The boys said they were tired", the antecedent of "they" is "boys".

Personal pronouns and their cases

The nine kinds

Pairs that confuse students

• Demonstrative pronoun or adjective? If a noun follows, it is an adjective: "Those books are mine" (adjective). If it stands alone, it is a pronoun: "Those are my books" (pronoun).
• Relative or interrogative? "Who broke the window?" asks a question (interrogative). "I know the boy who broke the window" joins a clause to "boy" (relative).
• Reflexive or emphatic? Remove the -self word. If the sentence still makes sense, it is emphatic: "I myself saw it" (I saw it: emphatic). If not, it is reflexive: "She cut herself" (She cut: incomplete, so reflexive).
• Distributive pronoun or adjective? "Each of the boys got a prize" (pronoun, stands alone before "of"). "Each boy got a prize" (adjective, before a noun).
• Reciprocal pronouns: traditional grammar uses each other for two and one another for more than two: "Ali and Ahmed love each other." "The members of the class help one another." Modern English uses them interchangeably, but follow the rule in exams.

Relative pronouns: which one to use

• Use that (not which or who) after superlatives and after all, any, none, nothing, everything, only, same: "This is the best film that I have seen." "All that glitters is not gold." "He is the only person that can help."
• Do not use that after a comma: "Lahore, which is famous for its food, ..." (not "Lahore, that is ...").
• Do not repeat the subject after a relative pronoun: "The man who came yesterday he is my uncle" is wrong.
• Place the relative pronoun next to its antecedent: "I saw a boy who was flying a kite on the roof", not "I saw a boy on the roof who ..." when it is the boy who flies the kite.

Pronouns: case, agreement and trapsOften examined

Two things go wrong with pronouns: the case (I or me, who or whom) and the agreement (a pronoun must match its antecedent in number, gender and person).

Case: subject form or object form

Who or whom

Turn the clause into a statement and put in he or him. If he fits, write who; if him fits, write whom (both end in m).

• "___ did you invite?" You invited him, so: "Whom did you invite?"
• "___ is knocking at the door?" He is knocking, so: "Who is knocking?"
• "The man ___ I thought was honest cheated me." Remove "I thought": the man he was honest, so who. "I thought" is only a comment inside the clause.
• "Give it to ___ needs it most." Whoever is the subject of "needs", so whoever (not whomever), even after the preposition "to".

Order of personal pronouns

• When pronouns of different persons come together, the polite order is 2nd, 3rd, 1st (you, he, I): "You, he and I will go." Never put yourself first: "I and Ali" becomes "Ali and I".
• When admitting a fault, traditional grammar puts the 1st person first: "I and he are to blame."

Agreement: singular antecedents

These words are singular. Any pronoun that refers to them must be singular (he, she, his, her, it, its; formal "his or her" for mixed groups): each, every, either, neither, everyone, everybody, anyone, anybody, someone, somebody, no one, nobody, one, many a.

"One of those who" and "the only one who"

• "He is one of those boys who always do their homework." The relative pronoun "who" refers to boys (plural), not to "one". So the verb is plural (do) and the pronoun is plural (their).
• "He is the only one of the boys who has done his homework." Now "who" refers to the only one (singular). So: has, his.
• "Babar is one of the best batsmen who have played for Pakistan." (plural noun after "one of the", plural verb after "who").

Other agreement rules

• Collective noun as a unit takes it/its: "The army has done its duty." Members acting separately take they/their: "The jury were divided in their opinions."
• Gender must match: "The cow gave its milk" (animals are usually neuter). "My sister and her friend" (not "his friend").
• Person must match: "One must love one's country" (not "your country"). "Students should respect their teachers."
• Clear reference: "Ali told Ahmed that he had failed" is unclear (who failed?). Rewrite: "Ali told Ahmed, 'You have failed.'"
• No double subject: "My father he is a doctor" is wrong. Write "My father is a doctor."

Sound-alike words (one mark each in editing)

Verbs: main verbs, auxiliaries and modalsOften examined

A verb tells what the subject does (run, write), what it is (is, seem) or what happens to it (was selected). A sentence cannot exist without a verb. Often the verb is a verb phrase of two to four words: "The students have been preparing for the exam."

Main verb (principal or lexical verb)

The verb that carries the meaning. In a verb phrase it is always the last verb: have been preparing, will be selected, can swim.

Auxiliary verb (helping verb)

A verb that helps the main verb to show tense, voice, mood, a question or a negative: have been preparing, will go, does not know.

Primary auxiliaries

be (am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been), do (do, does, did) and have (have, has, had). They can also be main verbs.

Modal auxiliaries

can, could, may, might, shall, should, will, would, must, ought to (and semi-modals need, dare, used to, have to). They show ability, permission, possibility, duty and so on.

The three primary auxiliaries

• After do/does/did use the base form: "She does not like coffee" (not likes, not liked).
• After have/has/had use the past participle: "He has gone" (not has went).
• After be use the -ing form (continuous) or the past participle (passive): "is writing", "was written".

Modal verbs and their meanings

Rules for modals

• A modal is followed by the base form without "to": "He can swim" (not can swims, can to swim, can swimming). Only "ought to" and "used to" have "to".
• A modal never takes -s: "She can" (not cans). It never takes do: "Can you swim?" (not Do you can swim?).
• Two modals cannot stand together: "will can" is wrong; write "will be able to". "must can" becomes "must be able to".
• must not means it is forbidden; don't have to / needn't means it is not necessary: "You mustn't use a phone in the exam hall." "You don't have to bring a calculator; one will be provided."
• Modal + have + past participle talks about the past: "You should have told me" (advice too late, regret); "He must have missed the bus" (logical certainty); "She can't have seen me; I was not there" (impossibility); "They may/might have left" (possibility); "You needn't have bought this; we had one" (it was done, but it was not necessary).
• used to + base form = past habit ("I used to walk"); be/get used to + -ing = be accustomed to ("I am used to walking long distances").
• had better + base form (strong advice): "You had better take rest" (model paper Q.5 C).
• Traditional shall/will rule: for simple future use "shall" with I and we, "will" with other persons; to show promise, threat or determination reverse them: "I will pass, whatever happens." Modern English uses "will" for all persons, and FBISE accepts both.

Verbs: transitive, intransitive, linking; finite and non-finiteOften examined

Transitive verb

A verb that needs an object to complete its meaning. Ask "what?" or "whom?" after the verb: "They sold their house" (sold what? their house).

Intransitive verb

A verb that has no object; the meaning is complete without one: "The baby slept." "The sun rises in the east." Words after it (in the east) are adverbials, not objects.

Ditransitive verb

A transitive verb with two objects, an indirect object (person) and a direct object (thing): "She gave me a book." Such verbs: give, send, lend, show, tell, teach, buy, bring, offer.

Linking (copular) verb

A verb that joins the subject to a word that describes or renames it (the subject complement). It shows a state, not an action: be, become, seem, appear, look, feel, sound, taste, smell, grow, turn, get, remain, stay, prove, keep.

Verbs that are often confused

• "The injured man lay on the road for an hour." (past of lie) "She laid the books on the table." (past of lay)
• "Prices have risen." "The government has raised prices."
• "Hens lay eggs." "I lie down after lunch."

Linking verbs take adjectives

A linking verb is followed by an adjective (or a noun), not an adverb, because the word describes the subject, not the action. Test: if you can replace the verb with is/was and the sentence still makes sense, it is linking.

Finite and non-finite verbs (overview)

Finite verb

A verb that shows tense and changes with its subject: "She plays", "They play", "He played". Every clause has one finite verb (in a verb phrase, the first word: has been playing).

Non-finite verb (verbal)

A verb form that does not show tense or agree with a subject. There are three: the infinitive (to play), the gerund (-ing used as a noun: "Playing cricket is fun") and the participle (present "a running tap", past "a broken chair", perfect "Having finished his work, he left").

In "He wants to play", "wants" is finite and "to play" is non-finite. In "Swimming is good for your health", "swimming" is a gerund (a verbal noun) and "is" is the finite verb. Verbals are covered fully in the verbals unit.

Principal parts and regular verbs

Every verb has five forms: base (play), -s form (plays), past (played), past participle (played) and -ing form (playing). Regular verbs make the past and past participle with -ed. Irregular verbs do not (see the next section).

Irregular verbs: tricky forms

Irregular verbs do not add -ed. Most errors come from using the past where the past participle is needed (after has, have, had, and in the passive after be). Learn the three columns aloud: "begin, began, begun".

• Same in all three forms: cut, put, set, let, hit, hurt, cost, shut, spread, split, quit, burst, broadcast, forecast, bet, read (said red in the past).
• Past = past participle: bring, brought; buy, bought; catch, caught; teach, taught; think, thought; fight, fought; seek, sought; feel, felt; keep, kept; lend, lent; spend, spent.
• Pattern i, a, u: begin, drink, ring, sing, sink, shrink, spring, swim (began, begun). Pattern i, u, u: cling, sting, swing, wring, dig (clung, clung).

Adjectives: kinds, position and orderOften examined

An adjective describes or limits a noun or pronoun. It answers: what kind? (a brave soldier), how many or how much? (three goals, some milk), which one? (this pen). Articles a, an and the are also adjectives (determiners).

Position of adjectives

• Attributive: before the noun: "a clever girl".
• Predicative: after a linking verb: "The girl is clever."
• Postpositive: after the noun, in fixed phrases and after -thing/-body/-one words: "something useful", "someone important", "the Attorney General", "the President elect", "the people concerned".
• Some adjectives are only predicative: afraid, asleep, awake, alive, alone, ashamed, aware, alike, content, glad (mostly). Write "The child is asleep" but "a sleeping child" (not "an asleep child"); "a frightened boy" (not "an afraid boy").

Order of adjectives

When several adjectives come before a noun, native speakers put them in a fixed order. Remember OSASCOMP: Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Colour, Origin, Material, Purpose, then the noun. Determiners (a, the, my, this) and numbers come first.

• Use a comma only between adjectives of the same kind (coordinate adjectives): "a cold, dark night", "an honest, hard-working clerk". No comma across kinds: "a big red bus".
• A test: if you can put "and" between them and swap them, use a comma (cold and dark = dark and cold).

Adjective pairs that are often confused

Degrees of comparison and adjective-adverb trapsOften examined

Positive degree

The simple form, no comparison: "Ali is tall." Also used with as ... as: "Ali is as tall as Ahmed."

Comparative degree

Compares two persons or things: "Ali is taller than Ahmed."

Superlative degree

Compares more than two; takes "the": "Ali is the tallest boy in the class."

Rules and traps

Adjective or adverb? The -ly trap

Most adverbs end in -ly (quick, quickly), but not every -ly word is an adverb. These are adjectives: friendly, lovely, lonely, lively, likely, ugly, silly, costly, cowardly, deadly, elderly, orderly, manly, motherly, brotherly, miserly, heavenly, holy, jolly, timely, scholarly. They have no adverb form, so use "in a ... way/manner".

Adverbs: kinds and positionOften examined

An adverb modifies a verb (ran fast), an adjective (very hot), another adverb (quite slowly) or a whole sentence (Fortunately, nobody was hurt). Most answer how, when, where, how often, how much or why.

Position of adverbs

• Manner comes after the verb, or after the object if there is one. Never put an adverb between a verb and its object: "She speaks English fluently" (not "speaks fluently English").
• Frequency comes before the main verb, after am/is/are/was/were, and after the first auxiliary: "He always comes late." "He is always late." "I have never seen snow." "She can usually find time."
• When several adverbials come after the verb, the usual order is Manner, Place, Time (M-P-T): "She sang beautifully at the concert last night." With verbs of movement, place comes first: "He went home early."
• Enough comes after an adjective or adverb ("old enough", "fast enough") but before a noun ("enough money").
• Only goes next to the word it limits, and moving it changes meaning: "Only Ali passed" (no one else); "Ali only passed" (he just passed, no distinction); "Ali passed only in English" (in no other subject).
• Negative adverbs at the start of a sentence cause inversion (auxiliary before subject): "Never have I seen such a crowd." "Seldom does he visit us." "Hardly had I reached home when it began to rain." "No sooner did the bell ring than the students rushed out."

Adverb pairs to use correctly

Prepositions: an overview

A preposition is a word placed before a noun or pronoun to show its relation to another word in the sentence: "The book is on the table." The noun or pronoun after it is its object, and together they make a prepositional phrase (on the table). A pronoun after a preposition is always in the object form: "with him", "between you and me".

Preposition, adverb or conjunction?

Many words can be all three. A preposition has an object (a noun or pronoun after it). An adverb stands alone. A conjunction introduces a clause (a subject and a verb).

Conjunctions: an overview

A conjunction joins words, phrases or clauses: "Ali and Ahmed", "slowly but surely", "I stayed home because it was raining." Unlike a preposition, a conjunction usually introduces a clause with its own subject and verb.

Coordinating conjunctions: FANBOYS

They join two equal parts (two words, two phrases or two independent clauses). There are seven: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So.

Subordinating conjunctions

They begin a dependent (subordinate) clause and join it to a main clause. The clause cannot stand alone: "because it was raining".

Correlative conjunctions

They work in pairs. The words after each part must be of the same kind (parallel): "She is not only clever but also hard-working" (adjective, adjective).

InterjectionsOften examined

An interjection is a word or short phrase that shows a sudden feeling: joy, sorrow, surprise, pain, approval or disgust. It is not grammatically joined to the rest of the sentence. The feeling in the interjection must match the feeling in the sentence.

Punctuation

• A strong feeling: put an exclamation mark after the interjection and begin the next sentence with a capital letter: "Wow! That was amazing."
• A mild feeling: put a comma after it and continue the sentence in small letters: "Oh, I forgot my keys." "Well, let me think."
• Only one exclamation mark. Do not write "Hurrah!!" or "Hurrah?".
• O (capital, no mark after it) is used when addressing someone solemnly: "O God, help us." Oh expresses feeling: "Oh! What a surprise."

Articles: a and anOften examined

Articles are the three words a, an and the. They are determiners (a kind of adjective) that come before a noun. A/an is the indefinite article: it points to any one, not a particular one. The is the definite article: it points to a particular one. Using no article is called the zero article.

A or an: decided by sound, not spelling

Use an before a word that begins with a vowel sound (a, e, i, o, u sounds). Use a before a word that begins with a consonant sound, even if its first letter is a vowel.

Uses of a/an

• Before a singular countable noun mentioned for the first time: "I saw a snake in the garden." (Next time: "The snake was long.")
• To mean one: a dozen eggs, a hundred rupees, a week, a kilo, a thousand people.
• With rate, speed and frequency (= per): fifty rupees a kilo, eighty kilometres an hour, twice a week.
• Before a profession or a member of a class: "She is a doctor." "Quaid-e-Azam was a great leader." "The whale is a mammal."
• In exclamations and after such, quite, rather, what, many: "What a beautiful view!" "such a hot day", "quite a long time", "many a student" (+ singular verb: "Many a student has failed").
• In fixed expressions: in a hurry, at a loss, as a rule, a few, a little, a lot of, a great deal of, have a headache, a cold, a fever, take a walk, make a noise, half an hour.
• Before a person's name to mean "a certain": "A Mr Ahmed called while you were out."

When a/an is not used

• Not before plural nouns: "a books" is wrong; write "books" or "some books".
• Not before uncountable nouns: "an advice", "a good news", "a heavy rain" (as a general mass) become "some advice / a piece of advice", "good news", "heavy rain".
• Not before meals, games, languages, subjects in general: "We had a breakfast" is wrong ("We had breakfast"), but "We had a delicious breakfast" is right because an adjective makes it one particular kind.
• Not after a possessive: "a my friend" becomes "a friend of mine".

Articles: the, and the zero articleOften examined

Uses of the

The zero article (no article)

Common article errors

One word, many parts of speechOften examined

The same word can be a noun in one sentence and a verb or adjective in another. Never decide from the word alone. Decide from its function (job) in the sentence.

Method: five questions

1. Find the main verb and subject first. A word with tense, after a subject or a modal, is a verb: "Little chips light great fires" (subject: chips; light has a subject and an object, so it is a verb).
2. Does it name something? If it is the subject or object, or comes after a/an/the or an adjective, it is a noun: "Switch on the light."
3. Does it describe a noun? If it stands before a noun or after a linking verb and describes it, it is an adjective: "a light bag", "The bag is light."
4. Does it describe how, when, where, or how much? If it modifies a verb, adjective or adverb, it is an adverb: "She travels light."
5. Is it followed by a noun or pronoun object? Then it is a preposition ("round the corner"). If it introduces a clause, a conjunction ("since you are here"). If it shows feeling on its own, an interjection ("Well, I don't know").

-ing words: verb, noun or adjective

• Verb (part of a continuous tense): "She is running in the park."
• Gerund (noun): subject or object: "Running daily improves health." "I enjoy swimming."
• Participle (adjective): describes a noun: "Do not get on a running bus."

Key terms

Parts of speech

The eight classes into which words are divided by their job in a sentence: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection.

Noun

A word that names a person, place, thing, animal, quality, action or idea.

Proper noun

The name of a particular person, place or thing; it begins with a capital letter (Lahore, Ali).

Common noun

A name shared by all members of a class (city, boy, river).

Collective noun

The name of a group taken as one whole (team, flock, pack, jury).

Abstract noun

The name of a quality, state, feeling or idea that cannot be seen or touched (courage, honesty, childhood).

Concrete noun

The name of something that can be seen, touched, heard, smelt or tasted (book, water, music).

Material noun

The name of a substance from which things are made (gold, wood, cotton).

Countable noun

A noun that can be counted and has a plural (book, books).

Uncountable noun

A noun that cannot be counted, has no plural and takes no a/an (advice, information, furniture).

Compound noun

A noun made of two or more words (classroom, mother-in-law, bus stop).

Gender

The class of a noun as masculine, feminine, common (either sex) or neuter (no sex).

Number

The form of a noun that shows one (singular) or more than one (plural).

Case

The form or position of a noun or pronoun that shows its job: nominative (subject), objective (object) or possessive (owner).

Possessive case

The form that shows ownership, made with an apostrophe (Ali's bat, the boys' hostel).

Subject

The noun or pronoun that does the action or is described by the verb.

Direct object

The noun or pronoun that receives the action of a transitive verb (answers what? or whom?).

Indirect object

The person to whom or for whom something is done (She gave me a book).

Subject complement

A noun or adjective after a linking verb that renames or describes the subject (Babar is the captain).

Object complement

A noun or adjective after the object that renames or describes it (They elected him captain).

Appositive

A noun or noun phrase placed beside another noun to rename or explain it (Imran Khan, the former captain).

Pronoun

A word used in place of a noun.

Antecedent

The noun that a pronoun refers to and replaces.

Personal pronoun

A pronoun for the speaker, the listener or the person or thing spoken about (I, you, he, they).

Possessive pronoun

A pronoun that shows ownership and stands alone (mine, yours, hers, theirs); FBISE papers also use the name for my, his, their before a noun.

Reflexive pronoun

A -self pronoun used as an object when the subject and object are the same person (He hurt himself).

Emphatic pronoun

A -self pronoun used only for emphasis; it can be removed (I myself saw it).

Demonstrative pronoun

This, that, these, those used alone to point to something.

Relative pronoun

Who, whom, whose, which, that: joins a clause to its antecedent.

Interrogative pronoun

Who, whom, whose, which, what used to ask a question.

Indefinite pronoun

A pronoun that refers to no particular person or thing (someone, anybody, nobody, all).

Distributive pronoun

Each, either, neither: takes members one at a time; always singular.

Reciprocal pronoun

Each other (two) and one another (more than two): shows a two-way action.

Verb

A word that shows action, state or happening.

Main verb

The verb that carries the meaning; the last verb in a verb phrase.

Auxiliary verb

A helping verb that shows tense, voice, mood, questions or negatives with a main verb.

Primary auxiliaries

Be, do and have, which can be helping verbs or main verbs.

Modal verb

An auxiliary such as can, may, must, should, will, would, ought to that shows ability, permission, possibility or duty; followed by the base form.

Transitive verb

A verb that takes an object.

Intransitive verb

A verb that does not take an object.

Ditransitive verb

A verb that takes two objects, indirect and direct (give, send, show).

Linking verb

A verb (be, seem, look, become, taste) that joins the subject to a complement that describes or renames it.

Finite verb

A verb form that shows tense and agrees with its subject.

Non-finite verb

A verb form without tense: infinitive, gerund or participle.

Principal parts

The base, past and past participle forms of a verb (with the -s and -ing forms).

Regular verb

A verb that forms its past and past participle with -ed.

Irregular verb

A verb that does not form its past or past participle with -ed (go, went, gone).

Adjective

A word that describes or limits a noun or pronoun.

Attributive adjective

An adjective placed before its noun (a clever girl).

Predicative adjective

An adjective placed after a linking verb (The girl is clever).

Order of adjectives

The fixed order opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose (OSASCOMP).

Degrees of comparison

Positive (tall), comparative (taller, for two) and superlative (tallest, for more than two).

Absolute adjective

An adjective that cannot be compared because it is already complete (unique, perfect, round).

Adverb

A word that modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb or a whole sentence.

Adverb of manner

Tells how (happily, fast).

Adverb of time

Tells when (yesterday, soon, ago).

Adverb of place

Tells where (here, abroad, upstairs).

Adverb of frequency

Tells how often (always, seldom, never).

Adverb of degree

Tells how much or to what extent (very, too, almost).

Relative adverb

When, where or why joining a clause to a noun of time, place or reason.

Interrogative adverb

When, where, why or how used to ask a question.

Flat adverb

An adverb with the same form as its adjective (hard, fast, late, early).

Preposition

A word placed before a noun or pronoun to show its relation to another word.

Double preposition

Two simple prepositions used together (into, upon, from behind).

Compound preposition

Traditionally a- or be- prepositions (about, beside); in FBISE papers, a multi-word preposition (because of, in front of).

Participial preposition

A participle used as a preposition (concerning, regarding, during).

Phrase preposition

A group of words working as one preposition (in spite of, according to).

Conjunction

A word that joins words, phrases or clauses.

Coordinating conjunction

One of the FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) joining equal parts.

Subordinating conjunction

A conjunction that begins a dependent clause (because, although, if, when).

Correlative conjunctions

Conjunctions used in pairs (either ... or, not only ... but also).

Conjunctive adverb

An adverb that links two sentences (however, therefore); it needs a semicolon before it.

Interjection

A word that shows sudden feeling (Wow, Alas, Ouch).

Article

The determiners a, an (indefinite) and the (definite).

Indefinite article

A or an: points to any one member of a class; a before a consonant sound, an before a vowel sound.

Definite article

The: points to a particular or known person or thing.

Zero article

The use of no article (with most proper nouns, meals, languages, games, general plural and uncountable nouns).

FBISE paper questions

Questions from the FBISE HSSC-II 2026 (1st Annual) papers, the old-syllabus paper and FBISE model papers that belong to this unit, answered the way an examiner expects.

Exam focus

1. Identify the kind of an underlined noun (abstract, collective, proper, concrete) and insert the right collective noun. (mcq)
   Asked three times in 2026 (Set D courage and pack, old syllabus flock).
   Go to answer
2. Choose the pronoun that agrees with each, either, neither, everyone and "one of those who". (mcq)
   2026 Set D MCQ 2 (Neither ... his); also a regular Q.5 (A) editing error.
   Go to answer
3. Name the kind of an underlined pronoun: relative, demonstrative, reflexive, emphatic, reciprocal, distributive. (mcq)
   2026 Set A (who), old syllabus (which) and the model paper (those).
   Go to answer
4. Find the main verb in a verb phrase, and label a verb transitive, intransitive, linking or modal. (mcq)
   2026 Set B (preparing) and old syllabus (sold: transitive).
   Go to answer
5. Choose a, an, the or no article (hour, university, MBA, the Indus, superlatives, meals, games). (mcq)
   Old syllabus 2026 MCQ 17 and the first error in 2026 Set B Q.5 (A).
   Go to answer
6. Pick the sentence with a correctly used interjection (matching feeling and punctuation). (mcq)
   2026 Set A MCQ 12 and model paper MCQ (iii).
   Go to answer
7. Decide the part of speech of a word that changes with function (light, fast, well, round, that). (mcq)
   Model paper MCQ (i) (light as a verb).
   Go to answer
8. Name the kind of an underlined adverb (manner, frequency, degree, relative). (mcq)
   2026 Set D MCQ 10 (happily).
   Go to answer
9. Correct six errors in a paragraph: articles, pronoun case, noun number, degrees of comparison, adjective or adverb. (short)
   Q.5 (A) carries 6 marks every year and these are its most common errors.
   Go to answer
10. Correct comparison errors: more cooler, most unique, superior than, behaved miserly. (mcq)
    Frequent editing and MCQ trap.
    Go to answer