Read the story below and notice the words in italics that describe the actions in the story.
I nearly missed my flight!
I live at Shahbag in Dhaka. I decided to visit my son, who lives in New York in December last year. I had booked my flight to leave Dhaka on Monday morning. It was due to leave at 9 am and I was expected to report at the airport by 7 am. I was completely happy with arrangements I had made for the trip.
I work in an office and usually go there at about 9 am. I never go to office late and I almost always arrive there on time. I come back home at about 5 pm. I usually go to bed at 11 at night and get up at 5 in the morning.
The night before my flight I had to do a bit of packing. Still I expected to get up from bed at my usual time. Unfortunately, I overslept and when my wife woke me up it was 7 am. I quickly washed and dressed myself and called for a taxi. I was hoping to get to the airport by 8 am. But as we reached the Airport Road, it was crowded with cars, buses and taxis and we could only move very slowly. I was grodually becoming impatient. But there was nothing we could do. I finally reached the airport at 8.30 am.
I reached the check-in-desk and an official of the airlines hurried me through the immigration, and eventually I was able to get on board.
Discuss in pairs which of the Italisized words tell us about the ‘how,’ ‘when’ or ‘where’ of an action that took place in the story.
Write down the underlined words in each column to show which of them answer the how, when, why or where of an action in the story. (One is done for you in each column.)
The words above are used to answer the questions of how, when, why or where. These are adverbs. In fact, an adverb is a word that modifies a verb, an adjective or another adverb. It also refers to manner, place, time, degree or frequency.
Look at the following examples. Here adverbs are shown in bold and the verbs that they modify are in italics.
Rabbi speaks loudly. (How does Rabbi speak?)
ARerwards she talked with the journalists. (When did she talk?)
Dilruba lives nearby. (Where does Dilruba live?)
Look at the examples of adverbs that modify adjectives and adverbs.
Adverbs modifying an adjecfive:
He is really handsome. (How handsome is he?)
That was extremely kind of you.
Adverbs modifying another adverb:
She drives incredibly slowly. (How slowly does she drive?)
He drives extremely/ost.
Remember that adverbs can also modify adjecfives or even other adverbs.
Look at the sentences below.
Tania is really beautiful.
The plan worked very well.
Note that adverbs have other functions too. Now look at the sentences below and find out what functions the adverbs have in these sentences.
Obviously I don't know everything.
He arrived immediately aker the meeting.
You may have noticed two more functions of adverbs here, e.g. they can modify a whole sentence and they can modify a prepositional phrase.
Exercise
Find the adjective in the first sentence of each pair of sentences below and fill in the gap with an adverb. The first one is done as an example.
Jhorna is happy. She smiles happily.
The boy is loud. He shouts ..................
Her English is fluent. She speaks English..................
Our mother was angry. She spoke to us ..................
5. My neighbour is a careless driver. He drives ..................
The painter is awful. He paints ..................
Zahir is a wonderful guitar player. He plays the guitar ..................
This girl is very quiet. She o6en keeps sitting at a corner ..................
She is a quick runner. She runs ..................
This exercise is simple. You have to put one word in each space.
Notice the adverbs you have used in the above sentences. In pairs, discuss how adverbs are formed. Now read the following section to know more about how adverbs are formed.
Most of the adverbs are formed by adding ly with an adjective.
For example, the word nice is an adjective and we can make the adverb nicely to talk about an action that is done in a nice manner.
As you have seen so far, adverbs frequently end in -/y; however, some adjectives also end in Iy.
For example: lovely, lonely, motherly, friendly, neighbourly are adjectives. For example:
That Iovely woman lives in a friendly neighborhood.
Some adverbs have two forms, one that ends in -ly and one that doesn't. In certain cases, the two forms have difierent meanings.
Examples:
He arrived late. (later than the scheduled time)
Lately he couldn't seem to be on time for anything. (recently)
In pairs, try to find more adverbs having two forms with two diflerent meanings. Make sentences with them and share with another pair.
Position of Adverbs
Read the sentences below and notice the position of adverbs in each sentence.
Cheerfully the gold medalist greeted the crowd.
The gold medallist cheerfully greeted the crowd.
The gold medalist greeted the crowd cheerfully.
Now discuss the two questions in pairs:
Do all these adverbs have the same position in the above sentences?
What positions does the adverb cheeifully take in each sentence?
Let's read the following section to know more about posiñons that can be taken by adverbs in a sentence.
Adverbs can appear in various positions in a sentence. For example, you may find an adverb:
before the main verb: I never get up before nine o'clock.
between the auxiliary verb and the main verb: I have rarely written to my father without an emergency.
before the verb used to: I always used to see him at his summer home.
