5 - Adverbs

We give more information about nouns by using adjectives. We add more information to the verb by using ADVERBS.

Imagine that you are giving a lesson in class.

Are you explaining the subject well?

Are the students listening quietly?

Are you speaking clearly enough?

These are adverbs of manner which tell us HOW something is done, eg

Handle the test tube carefully.

Adverbs of place and tell us WHERE something is done. Examples are everywhere, nowhere, outside and inside …

At the front of the class, next to the whiteboard, or near the door are adverbial phrases of place.

in the morning, at night, on Sunday are adverbial phrases showing WHEN.

Adverbs of time tell us when something happens.

The document was written recently.

In all the above examples, the adverbs add more information, about time, place or manner, to a verb.

Here is an example from the text:

Both areas, which are extremely useful to the students, are integrated here and are developed slowly but steadily (2).

Another category of adverbs says something more about an adjective:

very famous, terribly hot, awfully tired, extremely tall, or quite nice

Finally, adverbs can be used to comment on the sentence as a whole. These are called sentence adverbs.

For example:

The First World War started with an incident in Sarajevo, in the Balkans.

Unfortunately, a young Bosnian Serb called Gavrilo Princip, who was apparently a member of a revolutionary group called Young Bosnia, shot dead the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and his wife. This might have affected only Austria and the Balkans, but, regrettably, other countries were soon involved.

Download: Adverbs

Click here to return to Unit 1 - Parts of Speech