Grammar Study Guide for the HESI Exam

Parts of Speech: Verbs, Adverbs, and Others

Verbs

Verbs are action words, and can be written in present, past, or future tense. Here are a few examples with some of their possible tenses:

• run—ran, run, running
• talk—talked, talk, talking
• jump—jumped, jump, jumping
• laugh—laughed, laugh, laughing
• read—read, read, reading
• go—went, go, going
• throw—threw, throw, throwing

Verb Tenses

Although a few parts of speech can change forms, verbs are the only part of speech that can change tense. Tenses indicate when the action being written or spoken about takes place, whether it is in the past, present, or future.

Present

Present tense is used when you are describing an action that is happening now, in the present. The following two sentences are in present tense.

The boy is eating.
The boy eats.

Although one version of the verb ends in -ing and the other ends in -s, these are both happening now, meaning they are both in the present tense.

Past

Past tense is used when you are describing an action that already happened; in other words, the event or action happened in the past. Here is a sentence written in the past tense:

The boy ate his cereal.

The past tense version of the verb eat is ate, meaning the boy ate in the past. When writing in regular past tense, we do not use have, has, or had. For instance, it would be grammatically incorrect to write The boy had ate his cereal. The use of has, had, and have are saved for the past perfect tense.

Past Perfect

The past perfect tense is used when multiple things happened in the past, and you need to identify the order of the events. To create the past perfect tense, take a past tense verb and combine it with the words has, had or have.

Let’s look at an example:

Julia had already eaten when Ben got there.

In this sentence, it becomes clear that Julia already ate before Ben arrived. However, if the writer had just written “Julia ate. Ben arrived,” the timeline would have been unclear. Here are a few more sentences using the past perfect tense:

I have seen this movie before!

She had already spent all the money when he told her not to.

He has given quite a bit of money to charity during his lifetime.

Future

Future tense is used when you are describing an action that has not yet happened, but will happen in the future. The following sentences are examples of two ways to write in the future tense:

The boy will eat a burger for dinner.
The boy is going to the soccer game later.

Most commonly, the future tense is in one of these formats: will ____ or is going to ____.

Linking Verbs

Linking verbs do just what their name implies: they link the subject of a sentence to information about the subject. Whereas action verbs directly show the subject doing something, linking verbs simply form a connection.

Linking verbs are most often forms of to be, such as: is, are, am, was, be, been. However, there are a few linking verbs outside of the to be forms when describing senses or a state of being.

Both of these sentences use linking verbs, as the subject is not actually doing an action.

The baby is tired.
The food smells delicious.

Adverbs

Adverbs are descriptive words that have three main purposes: to describe verbs, to describe adjectives, and to describe other adverbs.

Most commonly, adverbs describe verbs. In the following sentence, *quickly is the adverb, as it describes ran. Adverbs describing verbs often end in -ly, but not always.

The track star ran quickly toward the hurdle.

Adverbs also describe adjectives. Remember, adjectives are words that describe nouns. In the following sentence, really is an adverb, as it is describing the adjective long.

Rapunzel’s hair is really long.

Lastly, adverbs describe other adverbs. In the following sentence, there are two adverbs: high, describing jumps, and really, describing high. High is also an example of an adverb that does not end in -ly.

The bunny jumps really high.

Prepositions

Prepositions are one of the trickier parts of speech, explaining time, place, direction, or position.

Commonly Used Prepositions

Sadly, there are no handy acronyms for remembering prepositions, as there are many of them. However, here are some of the most commonly used prepositions.

Time	Place or Position	Direction
at	on	across
on	under	through
in	inside	toward
before	behind	around
after	between	past
during	near	up
by	above	down
until	below	into

Prepositional Phrases

A prepositional phrase is a preposition combined with a noun or pronoun and an article. Prepositional phrases are necessary to create clear and coherent sentences. Prepositional phrases are not full sentences. Here are a few prepositional phrases to help you understand the concept:

• on the bed
• near a tree
• under the table
• with her friends
• across the river
• between the mountains

Conjunctions

Conjunctions are connecting words. They connect parts of a sentence, specifically connecting independent and dependent clauses.

Correlative Conjunctions

Correlative conjunctions come in pairs; these pairs, used together, connect parts of a sentence.

Here are the most common paired correlative conjunctions:

• either—or
• neither—nor
• both—and
• not only—but also
• whether—or

So, when you are using these conjunctions in a sentence, you cannot mix and match; you must use the correct correlating conjunctions together.

I want either pizza or sushi for dinner.
Neither Patti nor her sister knew about their brother’s new girlfriend.

Coordinating Conjunctions

Coordinating conjunctions combine two equal parts of a sentence such as two independent clauses. In this case, they are always preceded by a comma, unless the clauses are short. There is an easy acronym to remember them: FANBOYS.

F—for

A—and

N—nor

B—but

O—or

Y—yet

S—so

I went to the park yesterday, but it was too hot to stay longer than an hour!
I went shopping at the mall and I bought a new sweater.

Subordinating Conjunctions

Subordinating conjunctions help to combine two uneven parts of the sentence, connecting dependent and independent clauses. Although there is no solid acronym to remember the subordinating conjunctions, as there are many of them, some people use SWABI or AWUBIS.

Here is a list of some of the most common subordinating conjunctions:

• since
• when
• because
• after
• although
• while
• before
• if

Since I went to the beach yesterday, my car is filled with sand.
I will need to move across the country after I get hired by the company.

Interjections

Interjections are usually the easiest part of speech to understand, as they are easy to identify. Interjections are words that are used to illustrate strong emotion, such as shock, confusion, or anger; they work as a sentence on their own and usually end in an exclamation point or a question mark. Some examples of interjections are:

• wow
• oh
• ouch
• hooray