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Glossary: noun phrase

Explanation

A noun phrase is a phrase with a noun as its Head, e.g. some foxes, foxes with bushy tails. Some grammarians recognise one-word phrases, so that foxes are multiplying would contain the noun foxes acting as the head of the noun phrase foxes.

  • Adult foxes can jump. [adult modifies foxes, so adult belongs to the noun phrase]
  • Almost all healthy adult foxes in this area can jump. [all the other words help to modify foxes, so they all belong to the noun phrase]

See also expanded noun phrase.

Expanded noun phrase competition

Creating longer (expanded) noun phrases

Noun phrases can be of any length, from one word to very many words. This activity is a team competition where students' goal is to score as many points as they can by creating longer and longer noun phrases. As they do this, they will implicitly rely on their knowledge of grammar, and they will begin to see a range of different ways to expand noun phrases.

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02: Adjectives and expanded noun phrases

Year 2 Guided Grammar Lessons #2

This is Lesson #2 of a unit of 10.

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Teacher Slide

Objective: grammar

To understand the grammatical characteristics of adjectives and expanded noun phrases.

Objective: writing

To explore the roles that adjectives and expanded noun phrases play in writing, and to apply this to the pupils' own writing.

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KS1 noun phrase generator

Use the interactive whiteboard to generate weird and wonderful noun phrases. 

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Noun phrase generator

Try this noun phrase generator in class. Your students will enjoy creating weird and funny noun phrases using the interactive whiteboard.

Goals

  • Create some new noun phrases.
  • Examine what can and can't happen in noun phrases.
  • Evaluate example noun phrases, looking at why they do or don't work.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will be generating noun phrases. 

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Noun phrase generator: Activity

Use the interactive whiteboard to generate weird and wonderful noun phrases. 

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Noun phrases in descriptive writing

Goals

  • To explore the role of noun phrases in descriptive writing.
  • To consider how noun phrases can have ‘descriptive weight’.
  • For students to apply this in their own writing.

Begin by asking your asks students to discuss what ‘things’ are in this description:

In my room, there is an enormous swimming pool, and underneath one of the big windows there is an ice-cream machine.

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Using noun phrases to build worlds

Learn how writers use language to create rich and vivid mental images

How do writers use language to create images in your mind? Read this extract and think very consciously about the kinds of images the language is conjuring up for you.

A rustle in the tunnel darkness; the knife was in his hand, and then it was no longer in his hand, and it was quivering gently almost thirty feet away. He walked over to his knife and picked it up by the hilt. There was a gray rat impaled on the blade, its mouth opening and closing impotently as the life fled. He crushed its skull between finger and thumb. (Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere)

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Identify the noun phrase Head

Find the Head word (the most pivotal word) of each highlighted phrase

Identify the Head in each of the following bracketed noun phrases.

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Identify the type of phrase

Identify the type of phrase (noun phrase, preposition phrase, etc.) in each of the examples. Although we have included verb phrases as an option, remember that the National Curriculum calls these clauses.

 

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Y2 GPaS Test: Identify the noun phrase

Find the noun phrase in a range of examples

Identify the noun phrase, consisting of several words, in each of the following clauses.

Click on the words that comprise the noun phrase to select or deselect them.

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Determiners

Determiners form a class of words that occur in the left-most position inside noun phrases. They thus precede nouns, as well as any adjectives that may be present.

The most common determiners are the and a/an (these are also called the definite aticle and indefinite article).

Here are some more determiners:

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Determiners: Advanced

The following is taken from Bas Aarts's Grammarianism blog.

In a recent blog post on terminology I mentioned the word class of determiners, and said that they are a relatively new word class.

By 'relatively new' I mean 'early twentieth century'. The National Curriculum Glossary definition, determiner, is very brief, here I'll expand on it.

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Noun phrases

Noun phrases are phrases which have as their Head word a noun or pronoun.

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Phrases

A phrase consists of one or more words that belong together. It takes one of the major word class elements (noun, adjective, etc.) as its Head.

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