What is grammar?

Grammar refers to how we combine, organise and change parts of words, words and groups of words to make meaning. We use grammar unconsciously when we speak, listen, read or write. We also use it, particularly as teachers, to describe language. We do this by referring to its forms and its uses. Grammar includes a large number of forms and uses.

Key concepts

What are grammatical forms?

These refer to how words are made up and presented in speech or writing. For example, the form of the plural of regular nouns in English is ‘base word + s’; the form of the gerund is ‘infinitive + -ing’.

We can identify grammatical forms in parts of speech, grammatical structures and words that contain prefixes (a group of letters added at the beginning of a base word) and suffixes (a group of letters added at the end of a base word).

There are nine parts of speech in English: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, determiners, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions and exclamations. A part of speech or word class describes how words behave in sentences, i.e. how they operate and combine grammatically with other words. For example, in English:

1. • a noun can act as the subject of a verb but an adjective by itself cannot

2. e.g. The tall girl ran very fast (✓) but not Tall ran very fast (✗)

3. • an adverb can combine with an adjective but an adjective cannot combine with another adjective

4. e.g. well organised (✓), good organised (✗)

5. • a noun can combine with another noun

6. e.g. a car park.