How to see it
Papers ask about eight word classes. A noun names a person, place or thing. A verb is a doing or being word. An adjective describes a noun. An adverb tells you how, when or where. A pronoun stands in for a noun. A preposition shows where or when. A conjunction joins. A determiner comes before a noun. And a word's class is its job in this sentence.
A worked example
Line 1: the early bus. Early tells you which bus. It describes a noun, so it is an adjective. Line 2: Kit arrived early. Early tells you when she arrived, so it is an adverb. Same word, two jobs.
The common mistake: labelling a word by what it usually is
The trap is the label a word usually has. Early ends in l y, like quickly, so it feels like an adverb. But in line 1 it describes the bus. Check the job, not the ending.
Try one
At the harbour, a man stopped to light the lamps.
What type of word is light, in line 3?
- Anoun
- Bverb
- Cadjective
- Dadverb
- Epreposition
Show the answerHide the answer
Right: B, verb
To light the lamps is what the man stopped to do. Here, light is an action.