In this four part humorous series, middle school students continue to learn the essential elements of grammar as a foundation for writing.
Note: This is the third in a series of four articles offering the fundamental basics of grammar for middle school students. More about the series can be found in the first article.
Putting It Together: Bigger Parts of Speech, Phrases, Clauses, and Sentences
The Preposition and Prepositional Phrase. The preposition is usually a small word that defines where or when something is happening. Think of what a good prep student like you should be doing: being in the right PLACE at the right TIME. Some popular preps are: above, below, after, before, at, off, in, on beside, between, down, during, until, since, through, to, up, on, and out. There are many more examples. Prepositions usually do not stand by themselves, they usually begin what is called a prepositional phrase.
A basic phrase is a group of words that do NOT have a verb on board, such as “in the car,” “before the game,” or “under the cat.”
If a phrase begins with a preposition, or prep as its friends call it, and ends with a noun or pronoun, it is a prepositional phrase! “…IN the BACKYARD,” is a prepositional phrase. It begins with a prep, and ends with a noun. The noun is referred to as the object of the preposition.
Prep phrases are used as big adjectives or adverbs. In other words, a prep phrase acts just the way an adverb or adjective would! Watch this phrase: “in the backyard.” In the sentence, “Let’s play in the backyard,” the prep phrase modifies the verb play; therefore, the whole phrase is a big adverb, called an “adverb phrase.” In the sentence, “The boy in the red coat is happy,” in the red coat is an “adjective phrase” because it acts like an adjective! Try this: The boy in the red coat is happy to play in the back yard. How many prep phrases can you find?
The Other Phrases: The Verbals. We do not want to spend a great deal of time on these, but you should be aware of their existence. Let’s look first at a gerund and gerund phrase.
A gerund is a verb that thinks it is a noun (e.g., Running is fun). See, if you did not know about a gerund, you would have a very hard time explaining that last one! When you start a phrase with a gerund, and end it with an object, you have a gerund phrase: Gerund plus Object (Running the park is fun) Be careful! You can be fooled here. For example, what about this sentence: Running in the park is fun. Is that a gerund phrase? No. “In the park” is a prep phrase, and “running” is a regular gerund!
A participle is sort of a mix between a verb and an adjective. Most participles end with an “ing,” “ed,” or “d.” Examples of a participle are: a running boy, or a crying baby. To remember the “ing” ending, go back to our preppy model noted above in: “Preps like responsible partying!” “Part” is for participle, plus “ing.” Well, it works for me… The Participle Phrase then follows a familiar pattern acting just like an adjective: participle plus object (e.g., Removing his hat, Bob sat down).
An infinitive is a form of a verb that starts with the word “to.” Examples are: to run, to sleep, to dream. An infinitive can be used as a noun, or as a modifier (adjective or adverb). As a noun: To forgive is divine. As an adjective: The time to play is near. As an adverb: I stood to run away. Essentially, if a noun comes before the infinitive, it probably acts like an adjective. If a verb comes before the infinitive, it probably acts like an adverb. If nothing comes before the infinitive, it probably acts like a noun. An infinitive phrase is very tricky to spot. It begins with an infinitive and completes a thought with other modifiers or nouns (e.g., “We want to watch the game as soon as possible).
Appositives. Appositives are nouns describing other nouns, set off by commas (e.g., Bob, the letter-carrier, is nice).
The Sentence. Now we are ready to tackle the whole enchilada! A sentence contains a noun & verb plus maybe a direct object or indirect object, and maybe a few other modifiers. Just remember this: your basic sentence has one noun and one verb and maybe an object or two; everything else is just window-dressing (A.K.A.: modifiers). Let’s explore this in detail.
You may ask, what was that object thing you were talking about? A direct object comes after a verb and takes the action of the verb (e.g., I hit the ball). The indirect object shows where or to whom the action happened (e.g., I threw him the ball). If you are in doubt about which object is which, try removing the object and seeing if you can add the prep “to” in front of it. In “I threw him the ball,” you can switch the sentence to say, “I threw the ball to him”; ergo, him is the indirect object!
Nobody said that learning grammar was going to be fun, but hopefully this summary can help middle school students learn some of the topics along the way to writing well. In the next installment of Middle School Grammar Basics, we will continue with dependent and independent clauses and voices.
