KS2 SATs 2022 — English GPS Paper 1: Questions

The idea

Pronouns stand in place of nouns: personal pronouns like 'I', 'she' and 'them', and relative pronouns — 'who', 'which', 'whose', 'whom' and 'that' — which start a relative clause giving extra information about a noun, as in 'the girl who won'.

Determiners come before a noun and pin it down. Articles ('a', 'the'), demonstratives ('this', 'those'), possessives ('my', 'their') and numbers ('two', 'some') are all determiners in the KS2 curriculum.

Prepositions link a noun or pronoun to the rest of the sentence, showing place, time or direction: 'under the bridge', 'after lunch', 'towards the door'. A handy test is to ask where or when — a preposition usually starts the answer. A question may ask about any of these classes within the same sentence, so quickly label every word before you commit to an answer.

Worked example

In the sentence 'They waited for us beside the gate', what word class is 'us', and what word class is 'beside'?

1. 'Us' stands in place of the names of the people waited for, so it is a pronoun.
2. 'Beside' shows where they waited in relation to the gate — position — so it is a preposition.
3. Check: 'they' is also a pronoun, 'the' is a determiner, and 'for' is another preposition.

Answer: 'Us' is a pronoun and 'beside' is a preposition.

Watch out

• Calling possessive words like 'my' and 'their' pronouns — before a noun, KS2 grammar treats them as determiners.
• Mistaking a relative pronoun for a conjunction; 'who' and 'which' replace a noun inside the relative clause.