Learn English Grammar and Vocabulary Online
English is the most popular language spoken everywhere, and its importance cannot be ignored or denied. Despite the fact that English is not the most spoken language in the world, it is the official language in a large number of countries, and it is estimated that about 2 billion people use English to communicate on a regular basis. English is also the dominant language in many spheres such as business, medicine, engineering and information technology. Consequently, learning English is a must in today’s world. This article, ‘Learning English Online’ will help you to master the basics of the language.
English can be basically studied under several sub-branches. Vocabulary, Grammar, Pronunciation, Punctuation, and Spelling are these branches.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary refers to the words in the language. It is a fundamental and useful tool for communication. A person’s vocabulary is the set of words within the language that he is familiar with. An individual’s vocabulary develops with age and activities like speaking, listening, reading and writing helps to develop one’s vocabulary.
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Synonyms
A synonym is a word that has the same meaning as another word in the same language. Since synonyms have similar meanings they can be used interchangeably.
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Antonyms
An antonym is a word that has the opposite meaning as another word in the same language. Therefore, it refers to a word that is completely different from another one.
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Abbreviations
An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or a phrase. It consists of a group of words letters taken from the original phrase or word.
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Compounds
A compound word is a result of the combination of two words. A compound word can have three structures: closed form, hyphenated form and open.
Grammar
Grammar studies the way in which a sentence is formed in language. Grammar deals with the construction of clauses, phrases, and words in a language. Grammar also studies how words change their form and combine with other words to create meaningful sentences.
Parts of speech are a category of words which indicate similar grammatical properties. Different components of a sentence belong to different parts of speech. There are eight parts of speech:
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Noun
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Verb
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Adjective
- Demonstrative adjectives
- Interrogative adjectives
- Adjectives of number
- Adjectives of quality
- Adjectives of quantity
- Determiners
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Adverb
- Adverbs of time
- Adverbs of place
- Adverbs of manner
- Adverbs of frequency
- Adverbs of degree
- Adverbs of conjunction
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Pronoun
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Preposition
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Conjunction
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Interjection
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Tense
Tense indicates the location of the verb in time. It indicates whether the action is located in the past, present or future. Past, present and future are the three main times and they are further divided into aspects.
Present
Past
Future
- Future Simple
- Future Continuous
- Future Perfect
- Future Perfect Continous
Mood
Mood is a grammatical feature of a verb that indicates modality. Mood indicates how the verb should be considered. That is, whether the sentence is a command, wish, statement, etc. There are three main moods in English:
Voice
A voice of a verb indicates whether the action indicated by the verb is performed by the subject or performed on/upon the subject. There are two voices in English:
Phrases
A group of two or more words that does not express a complete idea. Phrases can be categorized into several types based on their function.
- Noun phrase
- Verb phrase
- Adverb phrase
- Adjective phrase
- Appositive phrase
- Gerund phrase
- Participle phrase
- Infinite phrase
Clause
Clause is a group of words that contain a subject as well as a verb. Some clauses can convey a complete idea whereas some cannot. A sentence contains at least one clause.
- Independent clause
- Subordinate clause
- Relative clause
- Noun clause
- Adverbial clause
Sentence
A sentence can be defined as a group of words that expresses a complete thought. A sentence contains a subject and a verb in order to express a complete thought. A sentence can be classified into four types based on their structure.
Sentences can also be categorized into four types based on their functions.
- Declarative sentence
- Imperative sentence
- Interrogative sentence
- Exclamatory sentence
Pronunciation
Pronunciation is the way in which a word is pronounced. It is the manner in which a word is uttered. The sounds of a language are basically divided into Vowels and Consonants. There are 44 sounds in the English language: 20 vowel sounds and 24 consonant sounds.
A vowel is a sound made by the relatively free passage of air through the mouth. When you pronounce a vowel, your mouth is open, and your tongue is in the middle of the mouth not touching lips or teeth.
A consonant is a sound made by partially or completely stopping the flow of air breathed out from the mouth.
Punctuation
Punctuation refers to the marks that are used in writing to separate sentences and their various elements in order to clarify their meaning.
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Full stop
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Comma
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Semicolon
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Colon
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Apostrophe
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Hyphen
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Dash
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Brackets
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Inverted commas
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Exclamation mark
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Question mark
Spelling
Spellings refer to the order of letters used to write a word. There are 26 letters in the alphabet and 5 letters out of them represent vowels. They are A, E, I, O and U. The rest of the letters represent consonants.
Homographs are words that have the same spellings but different meanings, origins and/or pronunciations.
Heteronyms are words that have the same spellings, but different pronunciation and meaning.
Homonyms are words that have the same pronunciation or spelling, but different meanings.