The eight parts of speech — noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection — with examples for KPSEA and KJSEA.
📖 4 min read · 5 worked examples · 7 practice questions
Every word in English has a job. The parts of speech are the names for those jobs. There are eight main parts of speech, and knowing what each one does will help you write better, speak more clearly and pick up more marks in KPSEA and KJSEA English papers.
1. Nouns — naming words.
A noun is the name of a person, place, thing or idea. Examples: boy, Nairobi, table, honesty, mathematics, Kenya, love.
Types of nouns:
2. Pronouns — words that replace nouns.
A pronoun is used instead of a noun so we don't repeat the noun every time. Examples: I, you, he, she, it, we, they, me, him, her, us, them, this, that, who, which.
Instead of "Wanjiru took Wanjiru's bag", we say: "Wanjiru took her bag."
3. Verbs — action or being words.
A verb is a word that shows an action (run, eat, write) or a state of being (am, is, are, was, were). Every sentence MUST have a verb.
4. Adjectives — describing words.
An adjective describes a noun or pronoun. Examples: tall, red, clever, Kenyan, three. In the phrase "a tall boy", tall tells us about the boy.
5. Adverbs — words that describe verbs (and adjectives and other adverbs).
An adverb usually tells us how, when, where or how often something happens. Examples: quickly, yesterday, here, always. Many adverbs end in -ly: carefully, slowly, happily — but not all of them (fast, hard, well).
6. Prepositions — words that show position or relationship.
A preposition comes before a noun or pronoun and shows how that noun connects to other words in the sentence. Examples: in, on, under, over, between, behind, with, by, to, from, across. "The cat is under the table." "We walked across the field."
7. Conjunctions — joining words.
A conjunction joins words, phrases or sentences. The most common are and, but, or, because, so, although, while, if, when. "I love ugali and sukuma wiki." "She ran fast but she still missed the bus."
8. Interjections — exclamations.
An interjection is a short word that shows strong feeling. Examples: Oh!, Wow!, Ouch!, Hooray!. They usually stand alone or at the start of a sentence and are followed by an exclamation mark.
The same word can be different parts of speech:
The job a word does in a sentence tells you its part of speech — not the spelling.
Common student mistakes to avoid:
CBC Grade 4 introduces nouns, verbs and adjectives; Grade 5 adds adverbs and pronouns; Grade 6 covers prepositions, conjunctions and interjections — and the way the same word can do different jobs; Grade 7–9 extends to phrases, clauses and sentence structures for KJSEA.
Sentence: "The clever girl quickly answered the difficult question."
Original: "Juma took Juma's bag because Juma's bag was new."
Better: "Juma took his bag because it was new."
his replaces "Juma's"; it replaces "Juma's bag".
Fill in the blank with a preposition:
"The book is _____ the table." → on, under, beside or near all work, but each means something different. Choose based on the actual position.
Join with a conjunction:
"It started raining. We continued playing."
→ "It started raining but we continued playing." (showing contrast) → "It started raining so we ran for cover." (showing cause and effect)
Look at the word run in these two sentences:
The same word can play different roles depending on what it does in the sentence.
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