Adjectives and Adverbs

Definitions:

Adjectives are words that describe nouns or pronouns. They may come before the word they describe (That is a cute puppy.) or they may follow the word they describe (That puppy is cute.).

Adverbs are words that modify everything but nouns and pronouns. They modify adjectives, verbs, and other adverbs. A word is an adverb if it answers how, when, or where.

The only adverbs that cause grammatical problems are those that answer the question how, so focus on these.

1. Using adjectives and adverbs

Adjective	Adverb	Example
beautiful		Ann is beautiful.
	beautifully	Ann sings beautifully.
warm		The room is warm.
	warmly	Joe smiles warmly.
slow		The car is slow.
	slowly	Ann drives slowly.

2. Making adverbs from adjectives

Adverbs are usually made from adjectives, by adding -LY. However, there are some exceptions. These are the rules:

Adjective ending in...	How to make the adverb	Examples
y	Change Y to I and add -LY	heavy - heavily                 happy - happily                 lazy - lazily
[anything else]	Just add -LY	warm - warmly                 nice - nicely                 loud - loudly

However, there are some important exceptions:

Adjective	Adverb
good	well
late	late                         (“Lately” means                         recently.                         It is not the adverb                         from “late”.)
early	early
fast	fast
hard	hard                        (“Hardly” means not                         much.                        It is not the adverb                        from “hard”.)

When you are sure that you understand the lesson, you can continue with the exercise.

Exercise - Adjective or Adverb

Write down the correct form of the word in brackets (adjective or adverb).

1. Tom is (slow) . He works .
2. Sue is a (careful) girl. She climbed up the ladder .
3. The dog is (angry) . It barks .
4. He acted (excellent) . He's an actor.
5. They learn English (easy) . They think English is an language.
6. Max is a (good) singer. He sings .
7. It's (awful) cold today. The cold wind is .
8. Dogs rely on their noses as they can smell (extreme / good) . If that is true, why does dog food smell so (terrible) ?
9. The little boy looked (sad) . I went over to comfort him and he looked at me .
10. I tasted the soup (careful) but it tasted (wonderful) .