Adverbs

(Update from the last post: Go to the Blog page of The Pear Tree Centre for Education for an additional exercise on the past perfect tense as well as the suggested answers and explanations.)

Adverbs

What are adverbs? They are similar to adjectives in that, while adjectives describe the nouns, adverbs modify, or gives further details or descriptions of, the verbs, adjectives or adverbs.

Describing the Verb

I ran slowly.

The car's engine died and it gradually came to a stop.

Often, one finds that adverbs end with an `ly', and this is true for those adverbs that describes the verb. In the above examples, `slowly' describes the manner in which the person ran, and `gradually' describes the car coming to a stop in stages.

However, there are adverbs that do not end with an `ly', and these modify the adjective or another adverb. Examples are:

He was too bold a character. (The `too' modifies the adjective `bold' which describes the `character.)

The deep green leaves is soothing to the sight. (The `deep' describes the extent to which the leaves, the noun, are green, the adjective.)

I drew very carefully the dots on the paper. (`Carefully', the adverb, modifies `drew', which is a verb while `very' modifies the adverb, `carefully'.)

Now, try to identify the adverbs in the following exercise. The answers are given in the next post.

Exercise

I went very quickly into the the wooden shed.  It was somewhat dilapidated and yet, there was a homely feeling to it.  I walked up to the chest of drawers, and with a piece of old newspaper that I had found lying nearby, I wiped off the dust from the surface.  Yes, it was still there.  I had thought the childishly drawn picture of a wilting flower would have faded with age.  But no, it was still there.  Slowly, I traced the outlines with my index finger and sighed.  It's been a long time, such a long time.