English II - LLE205P
Compiled
By
Mr. B.Simelane
Unit 1:
A study of the English Grammatical System
Identifying grammar mistakes and errors in various written texts:
 Concord
 Article use
 Punctuation
 Tenses
 Pronouns
NB: In this unit we will focus more on identifying mistakes in written texts, proof-read and edit
various texts.
Concord
What is a concord ?
 In grammar, concord refers to the way that a word has a form appropriate to the number or gender of
the noun or pronoun it relates to.
 For example, in 'She hates it', there is concord between the singular form of the verb and the singular
pronoun 'she’.
 Concord is also called Subject-verb agreement. In other words, in a sentence, the subject and the verb
must agree in tense and number (i.e. Singular/ Plural)
Example:
The children are naughty 
The children is naughty ×
(The subject is plural, so using the singular form of the verb is incorrect)
Article use
 In English there are three articles: a, an, and the.
 Articles are used before nouns or noun equivalents and are a type of adjective. The definite article (the)
is used before a noun to indicate that the identity of the noun is known to the reader. The indefinite
article (a, an) is used before a noun that is general or when its identity is not known.
 There are certain situations in which a noun takes no article.
 As a guide, the following definitions and table summarize the basic use of articles. Continue reading for
a more detailed explanation of the rules and for examples of how and when to apply them.
 Definite article: the (before a singular or plural noun)
 Indefinite article: a (before a singular noun beginning with a consonant sound)

: an (before a singular noun beginning with a vowel sound)
Punctuations
What Is Punctuation?
 Punctuation is defined as a set of symbols used to separate and clarify the meaning of
sentences and written elements. In other words, punctuation tells readers of your writing
where to pause, what words are quotations and which are clarifications, where words have
been omitted, and more.
 Examples of different punctuation marks include: full stops (.), commas (,), question marks
(?), exclamation marks (!), colons (:), semi-colons (;), apostrophes (') and speech marks (",").
Tenses
What is a tense?
 A tense is a form of the verb that allows you to express time. The tense of the verb tells us
when an event or something existed or when a person did something.
What are the types of tenses?
 There are three types of tenses: Past, Present, and Future which can be further divided into
Simple Tense, Continuous Tense, Perfect Tense & Perfect Continuous Tense.
Pronouns
What is a pronoun?
 A pronoun is a word that refers to either the people talking (“I” or “you”) or someone or something
something that is being talked about (like “she”, “it”, “them”, and “this”).
Gendered pronouns
 Specifically reference someone's gender: he/him/his or she/her/hers. Non-gendered or nonbinary
nonbinary pronouns are not gender specific and are most often used by people who identify
outside of a gender binary.
How do you identify a pronoun?
 A pronoun is a word that can replace a noun in a sentence. The noun that is replaced by a
pronoun is called an antecedent. For example, in the sentence I love my dog because he is a
good boy, the word he is a pronoun that replaces the noun dog.