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Topic: Adverb

Adverbs may modify adjectives (very funny), verbs (She laughed nervously), other adverbs (extremely quickly) or whole sentences (Luckily, she left early).

Adverb identification

Applying the semantic and structural criteria for adverbs

In this activity, students work through the criteria for identifying adverbs.

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Adverb identification: Activity 2

The feeling of hopelessness she'd experienced earlier that afternoon swept over her again.

Is earlier an adverb?

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Adverb identification: Activity 1

Which words do you think are adverbs? Remember the following clues:

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Adverb placement

In this activity, students explore the possibility of placing adverbs in various places within a sentence.

Goals

  • Practise constructing sentences with adverbs.
  • Identify a key trait of adverbs - that they can often be placed at various points in a sentence.

Lesson Plan

The teacher explains that today, we will be building sentences with adverbs.

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Adverb placement: Activity

she
combed
quickly
her
hair

we
will
soon
have
dinner

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Y6 GPaS Test: Identify the adverbs: Advanced

Identify the adverbs in each of the following examples. Click on the word (or words) to select or deselect them.

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Y6 GPaS Test: Identify the adverbs

Find the adverbs in a range of examples

Identify the adverbs in each of the following examples. Click on the word (or words) to select or deselect them.

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Y6 GPaS Test: Adjective or adverb?

Work out whether the highlighted word is an adjective or an adverb

In each of the following examples, indicate whether the highlighted word is an adjective or an adverb:

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Adverbs in use

Analyse the use of adverbs in three short extracts

Task

Three short extracts are given, with each one using adverbs differently. Take each extract in turn and follow these steps:

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Double negatives

Since the 17th century, English grammarians have spoken out against constructions with double negatives. Before the 17th century, double negatives were considered perfectly acceptable in English, like in present-day Spanish, French and many other languages of the world. Even today we're often taught to avoid a double negative.

The idea is that we should try to avoid saying something like:

  • He didn't not get the prize.

This is because in logic, two nots cancel each other out. So the statement above would logically mean:

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