Lesson 2: Pronouns - Personal, Reflexive, and Intensive

​Doug ate pizza after basketball practice. Doug prefers pepperoni, but Doug's sister ordered cheese. For Doug, this was not a dealbreaker. Doug grabbed a piece right away.

​Doug ate pizza after basketball practice. He prefers pepperoni, but his sister ordered cheese. For him, this was not a dealbreaker. He grabbed a piece right away.

• ​pronouns replace nouns to make sentences flow, create shorter sentences, and provide less repetition in our writing

• ​pronouns refer back to nouns earlier in the sentence

• ​an antecedent is a noun a pronoun references

  • ​Doug ate pizza after basketball practice. He prefers pepperoni.

    • ​Doug is the antecedent in the paragraph. He, him, and his refer back to Doug the noun.

• ​take the place of a specific person, place, or thing

• ​provide information about the "person" in a grammatical sense

• ​First Person: I, we (the speaker or writer)

• ​Second Person: you (the listener or reader)

• ​Third Person: it, he, she, they (everyone and everything else)

• ​made from personal pronoun and the suffix - self (singular) or -selves (plural or more than one)

• ​Reflexive: reflects back on the noun or pronoun already mentioned

  • ​Ex. I helped myself to a bowl of soup.

• ​Intensive: emphasizes a noun or pronoun already mentioned

  • ​Ex. Jake wrote that poem himself.

Intensive pronouns

• aren’t essential to a sentence’s basic meaning

• remove them from the sentence and the sentence will still make sense.

• Ex. Jake wrote that poem himself.

​Reflexive pronouns

• are essential to a sentence’s basic meaning

• remove them from the sentence and the sentence will not make sense.

• Ex. I helped myself to a bowl of soup

• ​Ex. Who was helped to a bowl of soup? Myself needs to stay in the sentence.

​Due Friday, November 5th