Tag Archives: Adjectives

Sep 11 2012
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The Lake Activity

Grammar practice from The Lake (Ch13)

Hard, hard, harder, harder and hardly!

HARD as an adjective. ‘Hard’ is an adjective that can mean ‘tough/difficult’. For example, ‘It’s a hard question to answer’ means I find the question difficult to answer.

Also, ‘hard’ as an adjective can mean ‘not soft’: ‘I can’t eat this apple: it’s too hard’. This means the apple is not soft enough.

‘Harder’ is a different kind of adjective. It is a comparative. It compares two things. In this sentence, ‘The exam was harder than I expected.’ The comparison is across two exams: the ‘imaginary one’ and the ‘real one’. Unfortunately, the one in my mind was easier than the real one!

HARD as an adverb: ‘Hard’ can be an adverb too. For example, ‘I had to run hard to catch the bus’.  In this sentence, ‘hard’ describes how I ran. The sentence means I had to run a lot to catch the bus.

‘Harder’ is a different kind of adverb. It is an adverb of comparison. It means – in the example coming up – I did something ‘more than before’. For example, ‘I ran harder yesterday to catch the bus than I did today because I was tired.’ The comparison is of how I ran across two times: yesterday and today. Of course, ‘harder’ can be used to talk about more effort in the future too. For example, ‘I’ll study harder for the English exam’ (compared to the studying I did for a different exam).

HARDLY as an adverb: ‘Hardly’ is an adverb. It means ‘almost not at all’. For example, ‘He hardly ate anything’ means he ate very little food.

PRACTICE

A. Is the underlined word an adjective (1), a comparative (2), an adverb (3) or an adverb of comparison (4)?

i. I can hardly see out the window – it’s so dirty.

ii. If you don’t like maths it can be hard to understand physics.

iii. It’s not too hard to lose weight if you have a good diet and exercise!

iv. He won the gold medal at the Olympics because he trained harder than the others.

v. Is English harder than maths?

vi. Cindy pressed the accelerator harder and the big Mercedes pushed forward.

Click on the link for more practice with adverbs of comparison: http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/worksheet/en26adve-l1-w-using-adverbs-to-compare

 

 

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May 10 2012
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The Cook activities

Grammar for The Cook (Chapter 11)

1. Adjectives describe or give us more information about nouns. For example, ‘Candy wore a long scarf.’ In this sentence, the word ‘long’ describes the scarf that Candy wore. The adjective comes before the noun (called an ‘attributive’ adjective)

In this sentence, the adjective comes after the noun (called a ‘predicative’ adjective): ‘Candy was afraid.’

2. Look at this extract from The Cook (Chapter 11) and find the adjectives in it:

But not Sergeant Roberts. Now he stood on the steps of the main building and stared hard at her. She stood completely still. ‘Oh, no,’ she thought, ‘he is trying to remember. Please don’t remember.’ Then the sergeants faced changed. His eyes became wide and his mouth dropped open: the poster on the wall in the police station. The woman from Scullwell! He took a step forward, but it was already too late.

3. Find the adjectives in these sentences and decide if they are attributive (before the noun) or predicative (after the noun)

a. The gym was large.

b. Candy dropped her favourite scarf.

c. The children enjoyed listening to special guests.

d. The policeman had a strange look on his face.

e. The children went to the school’s large gym.

f. Candy felt nervous when she saw the policeman.

 

 

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