---
title: "Adjectives vs adverbs"
description: "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."
canonical: https://lightmysky.com/learn/english/adjectives-vs-adverbs-mt_j351evNNnB
source: https://lightmysky.com/learn/english/adjectives-vs-adverbs-mt_j351evNNnB.md
retrieved: 2026-11-12
---

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# 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.

Subject: English · Area: Grammar & Punctuation · Ages 7 to 8
Page: https://lightmysky.com/learn/english/adjectives-vs-adverbs-mt_j351evNNnB

## Ready when they can

- 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

## Lesson: Adjectives and adverbs: two different jobs

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.

*(drawing: Tiny tells about the beetle. Carefully tells how it walked.)*

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.

**Recap.** 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.*

## Practice

24 questions on this page, each with its working shown.

## Needs first

- [Expanded noun phrases](https://lightmysky.com/learn/english/expanded-noun-phrases-mt_cU3LcEVkBQ)
- [Basic Nouns & Verbs](https://lightmysky.com/learn/english/basic-nouns-and-verbs-mt_yBJyCfhtem)

## Opens up

- [Prefixes and suffixes](https://lightmysky.com/learn/english/prefixes-and-suffixes-mt_HrgDjxcWvf)
- [Converting Words into Verbs](https://lightmysky.com/learn/english/converting-words-into-verbs-mt_p3tZiUaWAa)
- [Adjective Order in Sentences](https://lightmysky.com/learn/english/adjective-order-in-sentences-mt_VVx0hPPSKi)
- [Comparatives & Superlatives](https://lightmysky.com/learn/english/comparatives-and-superlatives-mt_X1L9DoUwjF)