I agree about the basic building blocks: I was never taught them correctly and, although I know what nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions and conjunctions are, to identify them, I still have to stop and think about it. I use this verse as an aide-mémoire:
Every name is called a NOUN,
As field and fountain, street and town;
In place of noun the PRONOUN stands,
As he and she can clap their hands;
The ADJECTIVE describes a thing,
As magic wand and bridal ring;
The VERB means action, something done-
To read, to write, to jump, to run;
How things are done, the ADVERBS tell,
As quickly, slowly, badly, well;
The PREPOSITION shows relation,
As in the street, or at the station;
CONJUNCTIONS join, in many ways,
Sentences, words or phrase and phrase;
The INTERJECTION cries out, 'Hark!
I need an exclamation mark!'
If I was to try I suspect I'd struggle to categorise words into their types as I don't believe I ever really learned them, maybe I wasn't paying attention in school on the days where they were discussed. However I hope my standard of written English isn't too bad and that most of the time I can make myself understood. I'd like to think that generally I'll use the correct word in the correct place so I've convinced myself that being able to categorise them probably doesn't hold all that important a role in my life.
There are so many things I don't know about the English language but I've got an issue common to lots of people who have reached a certain level of proficiency in any skill but skipped some of the basic building blocks, I don't want to go back to the beginning and put in lots of work to improve beyond my current plateau.
Relatively, you have a high standard of written English.
