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Topic: Adjective

An adjective is a word which can go before a noun and modify its meaning (the ancient tower) or go after a linking verb like be (The tower is ancient).

Adjectives: Avoiding adjective overuse

Many writers of fiction use adjectives as a quick way of telling us what a character is like: how they appear, how they feel, how we should view them. Look at the following examples of how adjectives are used to provide a basic description:

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Writing an advertisement with adjectives

In this activity, you will write a brief entry advertisement that describes a product and makes it sound as attractive as possible.

Goals

  • Identify the adjectives in an online advertisement.
  • Write an original advertisement using an array of descriptive and effective adjectives.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will write Ebay advertisements to sell products. To make your item sound attractive you will need to describe it in detail, using a range of adjectives. 

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Adjectives

A very simple definition of adjectives that has sometimes been used is that they are ‘descriptive’ words. But this isn’t really very helpful. Lots of word classes can be ‘descriptive’: a noun like funeral is fairly descriptive, as is the verb leap. We might also say that the adverb quickly describes the verb ran in a sentence like He quickly ran.

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Englicious (C) Survey of English Usage, UCL, 2012-21 | Supported by the AHRC and EPSRC. | Privacy | Cookies