English Language & Grammar (KS3)
UK Key Stage 3 English language: clauses, phrases, conditionals, modals, voice, punctuation, registers and Standard English.
Ämne: Engelska · Nivå: Högstadium (13–15) · 395 kort
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- A noun is a word that names a person, place, thing, or idea. Examples: teacher, London, book, freedom.
- Proper nouns name specific people, places, or organisations and always begin with a capital letter (e.g. Manchester, Aisha, NATO). Common nouns are general (city, person).
- Concrete nouns refer to things you can perceive with the senses (sand, music, coffee). Abstract nouns refer to ideas, qualities or feelings you cannot touch (justice, courage, anger).
- Countable nouns have singular and plural forms and can be counted (one apple, two apples). Uncountable nouns are treated as a mass and usually have no plural (rice, information, advice).
- Verbs express actions (run, write), processes (grow), or states (be, seem, know). Every English clause needs at least one verb.
- Adjectives modify nouns by describing or limiting them (a tired traveller, three biscuits, that idea). They usually appear before the noun or after a linking verb (the sky was grey).
- Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs or whole clauses. They often answer how, when, where, or to what extent (quickly, yesterday, here, very).
- Personal pronouns replace nouns: subject forms (I, you, he, she, it, we, they) act as the subject; object forms (me, you, him, her, it, us, them) take the action.
- Possessive pronouns (mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs) show ownership and stand alone, while possessive determiners (my, your, his, her, our, their) precede a noun.
- Reflexive pronouns end in -self or -selves (myself, yourself, themselves) and are used when the subject and object refer to the same person (She taught herself Python).
- Relative pronouns (who, whom, whose, which, that) introduce relative clauses and link them to a noun (the painter who lives upstairs).
- Prepositions show the relationship between a noun (or pronoun) and another word — usually time, place or direction (before lunch, under the bridge, towards the lake).
- Coordinating conjunctions join equal grammatical units. The seven in English are remembered as FANBOYS: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so.
- Subordinating conjunctions (although, because, while, since, if, unless, when) introduce a subordinate clause that depends on a main clause.
- Determiners come before nouns and signal which or how many: articles (a, an, the), demonstratives (this, those), quantifiers (some, many) and possessives (my, your).
- Interjections are short exclamations that show emotion or reaction and are grammatically independent (Oh! Ouch! Wow!). They are usually followed by an exclamation mark or comma.
- A simple sentence contains one independent clause: one subject and one finite verb (The cat slept).
- A compound sentence joins two or more independent clauses, usually with a coordinating conjunction or a semicolon (I cooked dinner, and Sam washed up).
- A complex sentence has one independent clause plus at least one subordinate clause (When the bell rang, the pupils stood up).
- A defining (restrictive) relative clause identifies which noun is meant and takes no commas. A non-defining (non-restrictive) clause adds extra information and is enclosed in commas.
- English has 12 main tenses: each of present, past and future can be simple, continuous, perfect or perfect-continuous.
- In the active voice the subject performs the action (The chef cooked the meal). In the passive voice the subject receives it (The meal was cooked by the chef).
- Modal verbs (can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would, ought to) express ability, permission, possibility, obligation or prediction.
- An apostrophe shows either possession (Mia's bag, the dogs' bowls) or contraction of missing letters (don't, we'll, it's = it is).
- A semicolon (;) joins two closely related independent clauses without a conjunction (It was late; everyone went home). A colon (:) introduces a list, explanation or quotation.
- Subject-verb agreement: a singular subject takes a singular verb (the dog barks); a plural subject takes a plural verb (the dogs bark). Watch out for phrases between subject and verb — the verb still agrees with the head noun.
- Collective nouns (team, family, government, jury) take a singular verb when treated as one unit (the team is winning) and a plural verb when the members are considered individually (the team are arguing among themselves). UK English allows both.
- Indefinite pronouns such as everyone, somebody, anyone, nobody and each are grammatically singular and take a singular verb (Everyone has arrived; Each of the players is ready).
- "Neither" and "either" on their own take a singular verb (Neither answer is correct). With "neither/either ... nor/or", the verb agrees with the nearer subject (Neither the manager nor the players are happy).
- For singular names that already end in -s, both forms are acceptable in UK English: Charles's or Charles' — modern style guides usually prefer Charles's (pronounced "Charles-iz").
- For joint possession, only the last name takes the apostrophe (Sara and Tom's flat — they share one). For separate possession, each name takes its own apostrophe (Sara's and Tom's flats — they have one each).
- A hyphen (-) joins parts of compound words; an en dash (–) shows ranges (1939–45, the London–Edinburgh train); an em dash (—) signals a sharp break in thought, often replacing a comma, colon or brackets.
- Hyphenate compound adjectives before a noun (a well-known author, a five-year-old child) but not after the linking verb (the author is well known, the child is five years old).
- Question tags repeat the auxiliary or be-verb from the main clause with reversed polarity: positive statement → negative tag (You are coming, aren't you?); negative statement → positive tag (She didn't reply, did she?).
- Most adjectives form comparatives with -er and superlatives with -est (fast, faster, fastest); longer adjectives use more and most (interesting, more interesting, most interesting).
- Irregular comparatives: good → better → best; bad → worse → worst; little → less → least; many/much → more → most; far → further/farther → furthest/farthest.
- "Farther" traditionally refers to physical distance (two miles farther up the road); "further" covers both physical distance and figurative or additional extent (further information, further along in the book).
- English vocabulary has three main sources: Anglo-Saxon (short, everyday words such as house, eat, sleep), Latinate (often formal or academic, e.g. construct, observe, considerable) and Greek (often technical or scientific, e.g. democracy, photograph, biology).
- Negative prefixes change a word's meaning to its opposite: un- (unhappy), dis- (disagree), in-/im-/il-/ir- (incorrect, impossible, illegal, irregular), mis- (misunderstand), non- (non-fiction), anti- (anti-clockwise).
- Positional prefixes signal place or time: pre- (before, as in preview), post- (after, as in postwar), sub- (under, as in submarine), super- (above, as in supermarket) and trans- (across, as in transport).
- Common suffixes change the word class: -ness turns adjectives into nouns (kindness), -tion turns verbs into nouns (creation), -ity into nouns (curiosity), -ly turns adjectives into adverbs (quickly), -ful and -less turn nouns into adjectives (hopeful, hopeless).
- The classic UK spelling rule "i before e except after c" works when the sound is /ee/ (believe, niece, receive, ceiling). Notable exceptions: weird, seize, protein, caffeine, and proper names such as Keith.
- When adding -ed or -ing to a short verb that ends in consonant-vowel-consonant and is stressed on the last syllable, double the final consonant: stop → stopping, plan → planned, begin → beginning. Do not double after two vowels or two consonants (read → reading, jump → jumping).
- Homophones sound the same but are spelled differently and have different meanings (their/there/they're, to/too/two, bare/bear). Homographs share spelling but differ in meaning and sometimes pronunciation (lead the metal vs lead the way; wind a clock vs the wind blows).
- Discourse markers connect ideas across sentences. Addition: furthermore, moreover. Contrast: however, on the other hand. Result: therefore, consequently. Example: for instance, in particular. They are usually followed by a comma in formal writing.
- Parenthetical information can be marked by commas (mild), brackets/parentheses (more separate), or dashes (most emphatic). Choose by how much you want to interrupt the main sentence: My uncle, a keen gardener, grew roses / (a keen gardener) / — a keen gardener.
- An ellipsis is three dots ( ... ) used to show an omission from a quotation, an unfinished thought, or a pause for effect. It is not the same as a full stop and should usually have a space before and after in UK style.
- A euphemism is a polite or vague phrase that replaces something blunt (passed away instead of died). Jargon is specialist vocabulary used inside a profession (debug, plaintiff). Slang is informal, often short-lived everyday language (knackered, gutted).
- An acronym is pronounced as a word formed from initials (NATO, scuba). An initialism is spelled out letter by letter (BBC, FBI, UK). An abbreviation is any shortened form, including Dr, etc., approx.
- Every English clause has at least a subject (who or what) and a finite verb. In "Birds sing", "Birds" is the subject and "sing" is the verb.