Grammar — The Advanced Review
Word classes as jobs, clauses as building blocks, and the traps that catch adults
Free trail · English · ages 13–14 · 6 stations
Word Classes Are Jobs, Not Labels
Most grammar confusion comes from treating word classes as permanent labels stuck to words. They are not. A word class is a job description, and the same word takes different jobs in different sentences. Flip every card.
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"Round" is an adjective in a round table, a noun in the final round, a verb in round the corner carefully, and a preposition in round the back of the house. Nothing in the word itself decides this — only its function does.
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A clause contains a finite verb together with its subject. A phrase does not. Running down the road is a phrase; she ran down the road is a clause. Every grammatical sentence needs at least one clause — a string of phrases, however long, is not a sentence.
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A finite verb changes with tense and subject: she writes, they wrote. A non-finite verb does not: to write, writing, written. Only a finite verb can hold a sentence upright, which is why Having written the letter collapses on its own.
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Both end in -ing, which is why they get confused. A gerund does a noun's job: Swimming is exhausting. A present participle does an adjective's job or joins a verb phrase: the swimming pool, she was swimming. Ask what job the word is doing and the confusion disappears.
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Word Classes Are Jobs, Not Labels
Flip cards
Most grammar confusion comes from treating word classes as permanent labels stuck to words. They are not. A word class is a job description, and the same word takes different jobs in different sentences. Flip every card.
A word has no fixed class. Its class is whatever job it is doing today.
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Phrase, Subordinate Clause, Main Clause
Sorting baskets
Two questions decide everything. First: is there a finite verb with a subject? If not, it is a phrase. If yes, second question: can it stand alone as a sentence? If yes it is a main clause; if no, a subordinate clause.
Look for a finite verb, then ask whether the group can stand on its own.
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Agreement Traps That Catch Adults
Try it
Subject-verb agreement is easy until a phrase gets between the subject and the verb. These five patterns account for most published errors.
Find the real subject first. It is often not the nearest noun.
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The Vocabulary of Grammar
Matching pairs
Knowing these terms is not pedantry — it lets you diagnose a sentence instead of just feeling that something is off. Match each term to its meaning.
Match each grammatical term to what it actually describes.
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Grow a Sentence
Slider explorer
Sentences are built by joining clauses. Slide right to add structure to one small event, and notice the exact point where extra machinery stops helping.
Slide to add structure, and watch where the gain turns into a loss.
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More English for ages 13–14
🎚️ Modals and Conditionals · 🎙️ Voice and Narration · 🔄 Sentence Transformation · 🌳 Word Roots and Etymology · 🗝️ Idioms, Proverbs and Collocations · 🎭 Literary Devices · 📜 Poetry — Form and Meaning · 🎬 Prose and Drama
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