Chapter 15: Stop Press! Student to Deliver Sentence 223
You can point out to students that most adverbs in English end with ‘ly’. But
note that many adverbs don’t. ‘Fast’ and ‘hard’ don’t change whether they’re
adverbs or adjectives and the adverb form of ‘good’ is ‘well’.Sometimes adverbs describe an adjective or even another adverb. In the
next examples the italicised adverb describes the bold adjective and adverb,
respectively:The statue was really huge.She does that particularly well.Looking at types of adverbs
The first adverbs students learn are often adverbs of frequency that tell you
how often something takes place. They’re words such as:✓ Always
✓ Generally
✓ Often
✓ Sometimes
✓ Occasionally
✓ Hardly ever
✓ Never
Other kinds of adverbs describe:✓ Time: nowadays, today.
✓ Degree: quite, rather.
✓ Place: somewhere, here.
Truly, madly, deeply: The rules of using adverbs
What often confuses students is the position of adverbs in a sentence.Most adverbs go after the verb in a sentence if the adverb is describing the
verb. For example:They play professionally.On the other hand, adverbs that describe transitive verbs go after the object
of the verb. I discuss transitive verbs earlier in this chapter. For example, to
raise is transitive because you always speak about raising something in par-
ticular. In the following sentence the object is the cup:The winner raised the cup triumphantly.