Adjectives vs adverbs
Distinguish adjectives from adverbs by checking the word being described. Choose forms for nouns, action verbs and adjectives, and select sentence expansions that place them correctly.
What a learner can do afterwards
- Choose adjective and adverb forms to fit their jobs in sentences, including an adjective after is
- Identify whether a describing word modifies a noun, an action verb or an adjective
- Select an expansion of a sentence that places an adjective and an adverb correctly
1 · Read
An adjective describes a noun or pronoun. It can come before a noun or after is: 'The lantern is bright.' Bright describes the lantern. An adverb can describe a verb, an adjective or another adverb. To choose a form, first find the word it describes.
Adjectives describe nouns or pronouns. Adverbs describe verbs, adjectives or other adverbs. In 'The eager cook waited patiently,' eager is an adjective describing cook; patiently is an adverb telling how the cook waited. An adverb can come before or after its verb. Check the job, not just the ending. Friendly is an adjective despite -ly. Fast can describe a noun as an adjective or a verb as an adverb.
Many adjectives form related adverbs by adding -ly. Use the adverb to tell how an action happens. Some spellings change: happy becomes happily by changing y to i before adding -ly. Gentle becomes gently by replacing -le with -ly. To change happily back to happy, remove -ly and change the final i to y.
To expand 'The snail moved,' add small to describe snail and slowly to describe moved: 'The small snail moved slowly.' Check each describing word separately. When editing a sentence, keep an adjective with its noun and use the related adverb for how an action happens. Keep the naming words and action words unless they also need repair.
An adverb can also tell how much an adjective applies. In 'The jar is extremely heavy,' heavy describes the jar. Extremely describes heavy: it tells how heavy. Extremely is an adverb even though it does not describe an action here.
Check the word being described. Adjectives describe nouns or pronouns. Adverbs can describe verbs, adjectives or other adverbs. An ending alone does not decide the job.
The lesson and question repairs were written for this dataset.
These four readings are adapted from Khan Academy grammar articles about adjectives, adverbs and sentence expansion.
More to read
Adjectives and adverbs
Adjectives describe nouns or pronouns. A sandwich might be stinky or delicious. Those words describe the sandwich.
Adverbs can describe verbs, adjectives or other adverbs. They can tell how, when or where something happens. Many end in -ly. Quickly and carefully can describe how someone makes a sandwich.
Find the word being described before deciding the describing word's job. An ending alone is not enough.
Glossary: Adjectives and adverbs
An adjective gives information about a noun or pronoun. Blue in 'a blue hippo' describes hippo.
An adverb gives information about a verb, an adjective or another adverb. Noisily can describe burped. Very can describe chocolatey. Yesterday can tell when someone sang.
These examples show why checking the word's job is more useful than checking only its ending.
Expanding sentences with modifying phrases, descriptions, and details
A modifier gives extra information about another word. Adjectives and adverbs are modifiers.
Start with 'The boy ran.' Adding tall gives 'The tall boy ran.' Adding quickly gives 'The tall boy ran quickly.' Tall describes boy, and quickly describes ran.
When selecting an expansion, check both jobs. A description for the noun and a description for the action belong in different places.
How adjectives and adverbs engage audiences and convey precise meaning
Compare 'The dog ran' with 'The fluffy dog ran quickly.' Fluffy adds a description of the dog. Quickly adds a description of the running.
Choose details that help the reader understand the scene. Adding more describing words does not always make a sentence clearer. Check what each extra word contributes.
2 · Watch
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Where it sits
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