English Grammar Cheat Sheet Page 4
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12Grammar Activity #4: “Parts of Speech: Nouns”
A noun is a _______________ word. It names a person, ___________, thing, _________, living creature, quality, or action.
ü Examples: computer, sister, anxiety, love, email, New Jersey, pen, family, Hernandez
Common vs. Proper Nouns
Look at the list of example nouns above. Notice that some of the nouns start with capital letters, and some don’t. The
capitalization isn’t random, though.
ü Use capital letters for names, places, religions, nationalities, languages, organizations, and brand names
(proper nouns): Anna, Argentina, Abercrombie
ü Use lowercase letters for everything else (common nouns): friend, country, restaurant
Concrete vs. Abstract
Look at the following list of words:
Charlene
love
friend
anger
laptop
jealousy
home
flirtation
What do they all have in common? They’re all nouns. Each one of them is a person, place, thing, or idea.
Notice that the nouns in the first list (Charlene, friend, laptop, home) are very different from the nouns in the second list
(love, anger, jealousy, flirtation). The nouns in the first list are things you can reach out and touch. You can’t touch the things
in the second list. Nouns you can touch are called concrete nouns. Those you can’t touch are called abstract nouns.
Directions: in the following four sentences, underline and then label each noun common (“C”) or proper (“P”). Finally,
further identify them as either a concrete noun (“CN”) or abstract noun (“AN”).
1. She doesn’t like to admit it to most people, but Lucy has a huge collection of stuffed animals she won at the Orange
County Fair. (5)
2. I have lived in the city of Santa Ana my whole life. (3)
3. My favorite television show, Modern Family, airs on ABC on Wednesday nights. (4)
4. Rory loves social studies and Christiane Amanpour, and wants to be a CNN reporter so she can travel to exotic
countries like Ethiopia and Egypt. (7)
Grammar Activity #5: “Parts of Speech: Pronouns”
You may need to review grammar activity #1 to complete the following statement (but we’re hoping you’ll be able to
remember it on your own):
A pronoun is used _____________ of a __________, to avoid _______________ the noun.
Write down four pronouns you can remember: ___________________________________________________________
Demonstrative pronouns are like pointers; they are pronouns that point to specific nouns. There aren’t too many, but
they’re pretty important: this, that, these, those.
The pronouns we’ve reviewed up to this point have always referred to a specific noun in a sentence. But some pronouns
are not so clear. Sometimes you see a pronoun, but you don’t know to whom or to what it refers:
Why does Ashley have to like Pedro? Can’t she have a crush on someone else?
Who is “someone”? We don’t know, and that is what is called an indefinite pronoun (someone, both, nobody, all,
either, many, anyone, everything, some, something).
Warning: Use indefinite pronouns cautiously. If people don’t know what you’re talking about, why are they going to
care what you say? Always be specific!
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