Is it a preposition? Is it a conjunction? Or is it an adverb?

Exploring grammar - telling the difference between prepositions, conjunctions and adverbs by looking at them in context.

We all know that in, on and from are prepositions.

Most of us know that and, but and because are conjunctions.

And I'm sure you all know that well, carefully and unfortunately are adverbs.

But what about words like after, since and until? Do these exercises to find out.

Is 'it' a preposition?

Quite a lot of people are finding this page by googling, "Is 'it' a preposition?". For them, ' it' is a pronoun, so we won't be dealing with it in this post but you can read all about ' it' here.

Song exercise - Don't you want me - Human League

After the exercises there are some notes on the distinguishing features of prepositions, conjunctions and adverbs. I also take a look at phrasal verbs and their particles.

Teacher tools - Basic randomiser

Basic multi-purpose randomising tool

This is a very basic randomiser for teachers wanting to randomise groups of words, phrases or sentences for copying and pasting into a document, with subsequent formatting to make worksheets. It does no formatting itself and is offered on an "as is" basis.

Possible uses

1. Randomising a group of words, for use in a matching or gapfill exercise for example
2. Jumbling words within a sentence or group of sentences, for example for word order questions
3. Jumbling a group of sentences within a paragraph - students order the sentences
4. Making anagrams or groups of anagrams

Negative inversion - practice exercises

Here are some exercises on negative inversion, as promised rather a long time ago.

If you need to revise the basic principles, I suggest you look at my post
Making sense of negative inversion. Hopefully!

Song lesson - 'It's All Over Now Baby Blue' by Bob Dylan

This song has to be one of the all-time greats. Recorded by Dylan in 1965, and covered by many others including notably, Them (with Van Morrison), the Animals (with Eric Burdon), the Byrds and the Grateful Dead.

The meaning of the song has been highly debated. All people seem to really agree on is that Dylan is saying goodbye to someone (a woman perhaps), or to some people (his folk fans maybe), or to something, perhaps to a part of his life (his accoustic folk days?).

This song is from the time when he was changing from being an accoustic folk singer to being part of the new (electric) rock mainstream, and not all his fans appreciated that. (See Wikipedia link below)

1. Vocabulary matching exercise
2. Song lyrics gap fill exercise
3. Extra activity on relative clauses, reduced relatives and nominal relatives

Song - 'America' from 'West Side Story'

America is one of the greatest songs ever from possibly the greatest musical ever, West Side Story.

A distinctive characteristic of this song is its rhythm, which mixes 6/8 time with 3/4 time (see Wikipedia link below). Some cover versions see fit to remove this feature, in my opinion totally ruining the song.

"In the 1961 film version of the musical, Anita (played by Rita Moreno) sings in favor of the United States, while Bernardo responds to her praises with corresponding criticisms satirizing latent racism in American society, especially towards Puerto Ricans"- Wikipedia

Song lesson - These Boots Are Made For Walking - Nancy Sinatra

Written by Lee Hazlewood and recorded by Nancy Sinatra, this record was released in February 1966 and was a Number One hit in the US and UK Pop charts.

There have been many cover versions in a range of styles: metal, pop, rock, punk rock, country, dance, and industrial. (Adapted from Wikipedia)

• Simple song vocabulary exercise
• Vocabulary - different meanings of the verb mess

Word corner - fair

The word fair can be an adjective, an adverb and a noun, and has various different meanings, as well as being the basis of several idioms. Here are a couple of exercises to help you suss it out.

Remember not to confuse fair with the noun and verb fare. There are some dictionary links below.