2. Common nouns These are the general names of things: dog cat cow horse boy girl man woman table computer chair television

3. Proper nouns These nouns are the names of particular people, places or things. They have a Capital letter. Bethany Luke Durham Brighton

5. Pronouns Pronouns do the same job as a noun. Words like he, she, it, mine and yours are all pronouns. They are used in the place of nouns. They are very useful, because they stop you from repeating yourself. If your writing was full of the same words being repeated, it could easily become dull! E.g.. Warren ate some cake, because Warren liked chocolate cake most of all. Warren ate it every chance that Warren got.

12. Grammar: Get the right tense Question: “What do you do on Saturdays, Dave?” “ I get up at about 10 o’clock and go down to the shop to buy a paper. Then I make some tea and toast and listen to the sport on Radio 5 live. In the afternoon I go to the match with my mates. We meet in a pub in town at 1 o'clock. We have a pint and then walk to the ground. Everybody is in a good mood and looking forward to the game. After the match I go to my girlfriend’s for my dinner. Later on we watch a video.” Question: “What did you do last Saturday, Dave?” Rewrite the above in answer to this question

13. How to put simple sentences together Constant use of short sentences can be a bit strange to read. To make your writing more interesting, you can use two other sorts of longer sentences. This simplest of these is the compound sentence. When you have two or more short, independent, simple sentences which are of equal weight you can join them together using special words called conjunctions. e.g. I hate curry is a simple sentence I like Thai food is also a simple sentence. You can put these together to make one, longer and more interesting compound sentence using a conjunction.

14. I hate curry but I like Thai food Beware – the conjunction you use may change the meaning of your sentence. Conjunctions don’t just stick sentences together they show the relationship between the pieces of information. e.g. I walked home. I was tired I walked home and I was tired I walked home as I was tired I walked home but I was tired I walked home so I was tired I walked home or I was tired The final sentence, using or doesn’t really make sense. You can’t use every conjunction everywhere.

15. Complex sentences Complex sentences don’t just divide into neat, complete, simple sentences if you take out the conjunctions. In complex sentences the conjunction is used to join together clauses . A clause is a group of words that contain a subject and a verb. Some of these clauses might be complete short sentences, but in a complex sentence at least one of them will depend on the conjunction for its meaning. In other words, if you take the conjunction away, the sentence won’t divide into complete units that make sense by themselves.

17. Although I’m not very good, I really enjoy playing football = Although = conjunction (joining word). Yes sometimes conjunctions can appear a the beginning of a sentence. I’m not very good = subordinate clause. This doesn’t make sense on its own. What are you not very good at? I enjoy playing football = complete short sentence

18. BEWARE! As for compound sentences, commas are not conjunctions and they should never be used to join short sentences or clauses together (commas aren’t sticky, so you can’t use them to stick information together!). e.g. The dinner was burned, she had forgotten it. = incorrect The dinner was burned because she had forgotten it. = correct

19. The important joining words The ‘magnificent seven’ conjunctions (the most commonly used) are: and, although, as, because, but, if, or There are a number of other important conjunctions that you can use. These can be put into categories of time, place, or agreement.

20. TIME = before, after, until, since, when, whenever, while e.g. We all went home before a fight broke out. She went to bed after she put the cat out. There will be no peace until somebody says that they are sorry. It has not been the same around here since our friends moved away. They put the television off when the programme had finished. He washes his new car whenever it gets mucky. The children go to the crèche while Mum goes to work.

21. PLACE = where e.g. Remember that restaurant where you ate a huge steak. AGREEMENT = though, although, whether e.g. He could play the violin though he was only five years old. I would invite you to come in although the place is a mess. It was a great show whether you wanted to join in or just watch. Try to avoid using the same conjunction over and over again. It is much better to ‘mix and match’.

25. Write about personal experiences Writing about something you did. Oh dear, how boring. But it needn’t be boring – not if you give it a little thought. The key is to decide which were the really interesting or unusual bits, and write about them. Grab your readers attention. In any piece of writing, you should always aim to get your reader hooked from the first sentence. Try to think of a striking or unusual way to begin