HSC Year 11 English EAL/D practice exams with worked answers

Every sentence is built from parts of speech, the word classes that do different jobs. Nouns name people, places, things and ideas (teacher, Sydney, freedom). Pronouns replace nouns (she, them, which). Verbs show actions, states or happenings (run, seem, become). Adjectives describe nouns (fragile, enormous) and adverbs describe verbs, adjectives or other adverbs (quietly, extremely). Prepositions show position or relationship (under, during, by), and conjunctions join words, phrases and clauses (and, because, although).

Many words change class depending on use: in a run in the park the word run is a noun, but in we run daily it is a verb. Always decide the class from the job the word does in the sentence, not from the word alone.

Writers choose parts of speech to shape ideas and perspectives. A noun such as newcomers positions people differently from invaders, and an adjective such as determined gives a more positive view than stubborn. Strong verbs carry attitude: stroll, stagger and march all mean walk, but each creates a different picture.

Verb forms. Most English verbs have five forms: the base form (walk), the third-person singular (walks), the past simple (walked), the past participle (walked) and the present participle (walking). Irregular verbs break the pattern: go, went, gone; write, wrote, written; buy, bought, bought. Auxiliary verbs (be, have, do) and modal verbs (can, must, might) help form tenses and show certainty or obligation.

Tenses. Learn the main ones by their form and purpose:

• Present simple (she studies): habits and general truths.
• Present continuous (she is studying): actions happening now or temporary situations.
• Past simple (she studied): finished actions at a definite time.
• Present perfect (she has studied): past actions linked to now, often with since or for.
• Past continuous (she was studying): an action in progress in the past.
• Future (she will study): predictions and decisions.

Keep tense consistent unless the time really changes. A common EAL/D error is mixing tenses within one paragraph for no reason.