Grammar Terms: Pronouns and Determiners
Know and use Year 4 grammar terminology including determiner, pronoun, possessive pronoun, and adverbial
What a learner can do afterwards
- Label the determiner, pronoun, and adverbial in 'She quickly opened her present on the table'
- Explain the difference between a possessive pronoun ('mine', 'theirs') and other pronouns ('I', 'they')
- Use the terms 'determiner' and 'adverbial' accurately when discussing a classmate's writing
1 · Read
A pronoun is a word that stands in for a noun, so you don't repeat a name again and again. Instead of saying 'Maya opened the present, and the present was blue,' you can say 'Maya opened the present, and it was blue.' Words like she, he, it, and they are pronouns.
Some pronouns show that something belongs to someone. These are possessive pronouns: mine, yours, his, hers, ours, and theirs. They stand alone, with no noun right after them. You say 'That coat is hers,' not 'That coat is hers coat.'
A determiner is different. It sits right in front of a noun to show which one, whose, or how many: the dog, her coat, three apples. If a word needs a noun after it to make sense, it is probably a determiner, not a pronoun.
Look at this sentence: 'He slowly closed his book here.' He is the pronoun, standing in for a name. His is the determiner before book. Slowly tells how, here tells where.
Some words, like her or his, can be a determiner in one sentence and a pronoun in another. Check what comes right after it: a noun next door means determiner, nothing next door means pronoun.
A determiner sits before a noun, a pronoun replaces one, and an adverbial tells you how, when, or where.
Rewritten readings were written for this dataset.
More to read
Using pronouns clearly
People, places and things have names called nouns. A pronoun can replace a noun so you do not keep repeating it.
"Maya lost Maya's pencil and later Maya found it" repeats Maya's name. Try "Maya lost her pencil and later she found it." Here, her and she refer to Maya. You, I, we and they are pronouns, as are he, she and it. These words are very common in English.
Possessive pronouns tell us about belonging. They include yours and mine, his and hers, and ours and theirs. Saying "That pencil is hers" tells us who owns it without repeating her name.
When you check your writing, make sure readers can tell who or what each pronoun refers to.
Choosing its or it's
These two words sound alike, so writers often confuse them. Check their meaning to choose the spelling.
The apostrophe in it's marks missing letters from it is or it has. For example, "Outside, it's raining" means "Outside, it is raining." Try both longer forms when checking a sentence. If one fits, write it's.
Its tells us about belonging. In "The dog wagged its tail", the tail belongs to the dog. This word needs no apostrophe. Neither do his, hers or theirs.
Names work differently: Sam's ball uses an apostrophe to show ownership. These possessive words already show belonging without one.
The jobs words do
Grammar helps us arrange words so our meaning is clear. Learning their jobs, called parts of speech, helps you check your writing.
A noun names a person, place or thing. A verb expresses an action or a state of being. Adjectives describe nouns. Adverbs describe verbs, adjectives or other adverbs. He, she and they are pronouns that can replace nouns.
Prepositions, such as under, on and in, can tell us about place or time. Conjunctions such as 'and', 'but' and 'or' join words or ideas. Determiners help identify nouns. The words 'a', 'an' and 'the' are determiners that go before nouns.
2 · Watch
En anglaisTake it off screen
Where it sits
Where this leads
Jobs that lean on this skill. Follow one to see everything it is built on.
24 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.