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Words are classified according to their function in sentences. These word classes are called parts of speech. There are eight parts of speech in English: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, con­junction and interjection. We will look at each of them briefly.

Usually, a part of speech consists of just one word, but its function can be performed by a group of words (a phrase); or a whole clause – a more meaningful group of words that can even be a whole sentence. For example, look at these three sentences:

 The aim is what we have to keep in mind all the time.

 Preventing trouble is what we have to keep in mind all the time.

 How we should prevent trouble is what we have to keep in mind all the time.

The second part of the sentence is the same in each example. The beginning of the sentence, the subject, means the same in each sentence, but the function of naming that subject is expressed in the first by a single noun, in the second by a noun phrase and in the third by a noun clause.

Labels such as noun, verb, phrase and clause are terms that you need in order to talk about writing. They help you to understand sentence structure, and therefore paragraph and document structure; they also help you to explain to others how their writing could be improved.