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Introduction

Greetings and welcome to my blog! Are you ready to learn? Lets go.

As stated in last lesson, this content is designed to help steemians who in one way or the other have challenges in grammar, effective use of English and communication skills, spellings and vocabularies. Reading this with undivided attention will be of great benefit to us all.
It will help us improve our writing and communication skills as bloggers.

Prepositions

A preposition is that part of speech, which helps us to know the relationship between two nouns or pronouns in a sentence. It usually comes before the noun/pronoun.
E.g.

• The Polytechnic is located in Ikot Osurua.
• The man's office is on Ikpa Road.
• He lives under the bridge.
• She jumped into the river.
• The thread went through the needle eye.

There are so many prepositions in English such as over, away, down, on, behind, beneath, above, across, at, in, among, between, beside, by, etc.

English also recognizes prepositions that are compound in nature.
E.g. apart from, because of, due to, in front of, in case of, in spite of, approve of, on account of, comply with, consist of, with reference to, in addition to etc.

Conjunctions

Conjunction is the name given to those groups of words that join words or groups of words together. They are simply connectives
E.g. and, that, when, although, moreover, etc.

Types of Conjunctions

(a) Subordinating Conjunctions:

This is used to show an unequal relationship (e.g., one part is more important than the other) E.g. after, because, if, in order that, when, where, while, unless, whom, who, that, as, although, whose, before, among others, etc.

(b) Correlative Conjunctions:

This occurs when the items joined are basically similar, e.g., and, as, moreover, yet, but, etc.

Pronouns

These are nouns equivalent or simply put, words that stand in place of nouns are called pronouns.

Consider these two examples:
(i) Jane was angry because James took away Jone's property before Jane could come back to meet him.

(ii) Jane was angry because James took away her property before she could come back to meet him.

In sentence (ii), pronouns are used to replace the nouns in sentence (i). This is done to avoid unnecessary repetitions.

In terms of functions, pronouns perform the same function a noun would perform in a sentence.

Types of pronouns

(a) Personal Pronouns: This pronoun refers to the person speaking. They are used to replace names of persons or things. We usually make three distinctions in English.

Person	Singular	Plural
1" Person	I	We
	Me	Us
2 Person	You	You
3 Person	he, she, it, one	They

★ I own the car
★ It belongs to me
★ She/he/it was here
★ They were here

(a) Interrogative Pronouns: These pronouns are used to ask questions.e.g. Who? Whom? Where? What? Whose? Which?

★ Who told you the story?
★ What did you buy?

(c) Possessive Pronouns: They show ownership or possession. They include theirs, ours, hers, his, yours, mine, etc. e.g,
★ Is this house yours? No, it is not mine, It is his.

(d) Relative Pronouns: These pronouns simply act to join two statements or parts of sentence together. The common ones are who,
whom, which, whose and that.

E.g.
★ This is the man who took the book.
★ She is the lady whose cell phone was snatched.

(e) Indefinite Pronouns: These are so-called because they are not specific in nature. For example, far, some, many, somebody, someone, nobody, any lady, everyone, everything, little, others, another, every, no one, all, something, neither, ones, everybody, etc. e.g.

★ Mary did the job (definite)
★ Someone did the job (indefinite)

(f) Demonstrative Pronouns: Those pronouns which point to places, things, or persons are referred to as demonstrative pronouns.

They include: This These

                      That      Those

E.g.,

★ This is my book (singular)
★ Those are my books (plural)

(g) Reflexive Pronouns: These pronouns refer to the subject of the sentence, and they have 'self' as ending for their singular and 'selves' as ending for their plural forms.

Eg

Person	Singular	Plural
1" Person	Myself	Yourselves
2 Person	Yourself	Yourselves
3 Person	Himself, Themselves	Herself, Itself

Pronouns forms

Subjunctive forms	Objective forms	Possessive forms	Reflexive forms
I	Me	Mine	Myself
We	Us	Ours	Ourselves
He	Him	His	Himself
She	Her	Hers	Herself
It	It	Its	Itself
You	You	Yours	Yourself/Yourselves
They	Them	Thier	Themselves
Who	Whom	Whose	-
One	One	One's	Oneself

Note that the subjective forms are used in the beginning of a sentence before the verb of a sentence, while the objective forms are used as the object of a sentence after the verb. The possessive case shows that something belongs to somebody.

Interjection

This part of speech is used to express strong emotions such as anger excitement, surprise, joy, shock, followed by an exclamation sign(!)
E.g.
★ Oh! What a sad news?
★ Hurray! I made it.

Note that it is a distinct part of speech because it has no relationship with the others.

Articles

Articles are a, an, and the. It is some kind of because it is used to modify a noun.
They are usually divided into two: definite and indefinite articles. Consider the following sentences.

★ The girl who won the beauty contest is from Akwa Ibom State.
★ A girl won the beauty contest.

The first sentence is an example of the use of a definite article (because the girl in question is known), while in the second, it is an unknown girl (indefinite).

Determiners

Some authors tend to discuss articles and determiners together; there is nothing wrong with that. But here, we intend to make slight modifications. Determiners are wider than articles. Consider the following instances.

(a) Determiners are single words like: a, the, some, much, my, other, both, which.

(b) Determiners are also phrases like: few, a little, a lot of, how much.
Both kinds of determiners are used in front of nouns.
E.g.
A car, some things, much money, the hill, a lot of people, a few cows.

The possessive adjectives, my, yours, his, hers, its, etc. are also determiners.

Uses of Determiners

(a) Determiners used only with singular countable nouns.

E.g.
a
an
another
every
hotel
one more

★ a hotel
★ an egg
★ one more egg
★ another hotel

(b) Determiners used only with plural nouns
E.g.
a couple of
a few
a great many
a pair of
both
few
how many
many
other
several
several of the
these
those

★ a few windows
★ Many windows
★ Both windows

(c) Determiners used with uncountable and plural nouns.

E.g.
enough
a lot
an
other
more
pens
a lot more
lots of

★ an ink
★ lots of pens

(d) Determiners used with uncountable and singular nouns.

this
that

(e) Determiners used with only uncountable nouns.

E.g.
a little
a piece of
little
how much
very little

★ a piece of gold

(f) These group of determiners can be used with uncountable nouns, singular countable nouns and plural nouns; any, the, the other, my, you're his, her, its, our, their, some, some of the, what, no, which.

Conclusion

That is the end of the lesson presented in this contest. I believe you have learned something in this lesson as usual. Please drop your questions and suggestions at the comment section. I am inviting @manuelhooks, @okere-blessing and @kesybliss to take part in this contest. I will be glad to hear from you and don't forget to read lesson 1, 2, 3 and 4 below.

• Effective Communication and Language Skills: Lesson 1 (Word Class)

• Effective Communication and Language Skills: Lesson 2 (Verbs)

• Effective Communication and Language Skills: Lesson 3 (Adjectives)

• Effective Communication and Language Skills: (Adverbs)