Interjections

The Expressive Part of Speech

Reading and Discussion
Interjections usually begin a sentence with strong feelings or emotions. They can
express emotions such as happiness, sadness, excitement, disappointment, anger,
disgust, horror, and shock. For example:

Wow! Look at that rainbow.

Help! The canoe sprang a leak.
Oops! Grandma dropped the ice cream cake.

Sometimes an interjection is a word with an expressive sound:

Yuck! Whoever heard of pickles with cheese?

Ouch! I caught my finger in the drawer.

You can even invent your own interjections.

Icy Cool! What a great swimming pool.

Gophers! I forgot to bring my history homework.

Interjections can add a pinch of spice to a sentence or story. They can express strong
feeling or emotion with just one word. But, use interjections wisely. Too many
interjections can lose their punch and make your sentences sound silly.
Interjections are easy to use. They dont have any grammatical connection to the rest of
the sentence. That means you dont have to figure out if they are the subject or the
predicate or any other sentence part. Interjections are just thrown in or interjected into
the sentence. However, there is one rule you should remember when using interjections.
If the emotion is strong, use an exclamation point after the interjection. For example:

Help! I forgot to close the windows before I turned on the sprinklers.

If the emotion is not as strong, we should use a comma after the interjection.

Help, I cant close this window alone.

Here are some common interjections:

Aha, all right, Gadzooks, gee whiz, gosh, hello,

help, hey, hooray, my goodness, oh, oh no, ouch,
oops, well, wow, yippee, yikes, yuck.

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Activities
Activity A: Using some of the interjections from the list above, fill in the blanks in the
sentences below. Decide what emotion you want to express and how strong it should be.
Remember to use the correct punctuation after your interjection.
1. _____________________ I lost my mittens in the mud.
2. _____________________ Mr. Johnson gave us a history quiz.
3. _____________________ My uncles puppy smells awful.
4. _____________________ That hurt!
5. _____________________ Sylvia left out the salt in the recipe.
6. _____________________ The Tigers won the championship game.
7. _____________________ Why did it have to rain today?
8. _____________________ Look at how fast that rocket goes.
9. _____________________ Who took my notebook?
10. ____________________ We forgot to buy our tickets.

Activity B: Create your own interjection and write a sentence.

_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________

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Answer Key
Activity A
Answers will vary

Activity B
Answers will vary

Copyright 2009 LessonSnips www.lessonsnips.com