Hey schelljo,
Knowing the parts of speech is helpful only to the extent that they help you identify potential errors (i.e. Subject-Verb Agreement, Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement, etc.) Here's really all you have to know:
There are 8 parts of speech in the English language: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections. Interjections are not part of any GMAT grammar errors, so you don't even have to worry about those!
Nouns are words that refer to people, places, things, and ideas. For example, "Paris," "dad," "clarinet," and "Love" are all nouns. They can be capitalized or not capitalized (the GMAT doesn't test capitalization). Nouns are tested on the GMAT in the form of Subject-Verb Agreement, Parallelism, and Comparisons. Nouns can appear throughout a sentence - they can be doing the action of the verb as a subject, or receiving the action of the verb as the object.
Pronouns are words that take the place of a noun.
Example:
Marisa went shopping and
she purchased a new scarf.
Marisa is the noun (the subject to be precise!) and the word "she" is the pronoun that replaces Marisa. The word that the pronoun refers back to is called the antecedent or referent.
Verbs are very important on the GMAT. These are words that express action or behavior.
Examples: She
is tired.
They
became team captains.
Varun
prepares for the GMAT.
The GMAT tests verbs in Subject-Verb Agreement, Verb Tenses, and Parallelism in a variety of ways.
Adjectives and adverbs are called "modifiers" because they add to or change the meaning of other words.
Adjectives describe or modify nouns or pronouns.
Examples: The
blue sweater was
pale-colored.
The
rainy day made us stay
inside.
Adverbs are more flexible than adjectives because they can modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs! They almost always end in the suffix -ly so the good news is they are easily identifiable!
Examples: She
quickly ran to her chemistry class.
The new puppy jumped
excitedly up and down.
Notice that adjectives and adverbs can be positioned both before and after the words they modify. The GMAT tests the use of these words in Modification errors.
Prepositions are
not explicitly tested on the GMAT (there is no such thing as a "Preposition error," but they are worth identifying because they are the number one way the GMAT makes simple sentences seem longer and more confusing. A preposition is a connector - these are words that describe location or relationship. Some common prepositions include:
"¢ about
"¢ above
"¢ across
"¢ after
"¢ as
"¢ before
"¢ by
"¢ during
"¢ except
"¢ for
"¢ from
"¢ in
"¢ like
"¢ of
"¢ on
"¢ since
"¢ than
"¢ to
"¢ with
The GMAT can take a relatively simple sentence:
The archaeologist examined the bones.
And turn it into something confusing by adding multiply prepositional phrases:
During the course of the inquiry, the archaeologist from the University of St. Louis examined the bones, except for those discovered after he had left the dig site, since they were going to be shipped to the lab at a later date.
If you can recognize all those prepositions, you can mentally remove the unnecessary verbiage as you search for a grammar error. Noticing that a sentence has too many prepositions can help you identify style errors such as wordiness and awkwardness.
Honestly, that's really ALL you need to know about parts of speech. If you already know all of this stuff, you should go ahead and get started on the MGMAT Sentence Correction book:
https://www.amazon.com/Sentence-Correcti ... 0979017572
That's where you'll learn how these parts of speech manifest as actual GMAT errors, and that's the important things to learn! I wouldn't waste any more time on parts of speech as a standalone topic.
You can see some free SC questions here:
https://gmatrockstar.com/tag/gmat-sentence-correction/
Best,
Vivian[/url]
