TRANSCRIPT OF THE ABOVE VIDEO: English Grammar Lesson: The Difference between Adjectives and Adverbs - Essential Grammar Simplified

Hi everyone, it's Nicole again, and I'm here answering another one of your questions.

I've had this question a lot recently and it really is something that is, what should I say, basic grammar, that all of us should really learn from the very beginning.

I am aware that not all of us have had the chance to learn all the parts of grammar and not all of us have had the opportunity to be part of a grammar class or to take grammar lessons, so sometimes these small little parts are missing. So, do feel free to ask, because I'm here to help you with all of that.

But, very very quickly, I've had a few people this week who are quite confused about the difference between an adjective and an adverb, and how they are used, and a lot of people I have seen in their writing recently, have been using adjectives instead of adverbs, or adverbs instead of adjectives. So, I'm just going to keep this really brief, really simple, and we can go into much more detail about this in another video in the future.

But just briefly making it clear for you so that you understand the difference. An adjective is always something that describes a noun, ok, it gives more information about a noun. We might say a good book, or a happy girl, or a delicious dinner, you know, all of those words, good, happy, delicious are describing a noun, a person, a thing, an object, whatever it might be, we're putting that adjective in front of that noun, ok.

Now, when it comes to adverbs, ok, adverbs do not describe a noun, they do not describe the girl, or the book, or the dinner, no. Adverbs are used to give more information about a verb, ok, so if you say I run, for example, that's lovely, but it's a really simple sentence, you know, with just a subject and a verb. In order to make your writing and your speaking more advanced and more impressive, you can add an adverb to talk about how this action happened, to give more detail about the running, or whatever the verb may be. So, instead of saying I run, you could say I run quickly, much more descriptive and much more detail there, I'm sure you agree. It's much more interesting to read or to listen to that.

So, in that situation, you know, we need to say quickly, the adverb, because run is not a noun, you know, run is a verb, to run, if we're giving more information about that verb, we have to use an adverb, and 99% of the time an adverb is a word ending in ly, not always, there are exceptions, and there are adverbs of time, definitely, which are very different. However, if you're unsure, go and find yourself a word that ends in ly, and 99% of the time it will be correct, it will be an adverb.

So yeah, look, we could say I run quickly, or she speaks quickly, or maybe even he I don't know, he understood the explanation perfectly, you know, instead of saying it was perfect, or the explanation was perfect, there, perfect is talking about explanation, which is a noun, and this time we're talking with the verb, he explained the situation, whatever it is, perfectly. So, there, perfectly is giving more information about the verb explained. Does that make sense?

Yeah, another example might be um, she learns seven words a week consistently. So, there, the consistently is giving us more information about the verb learns, it's giving us more detail, I suppose, about how she learns, does that make sense?

Great, so, look, very very very briefly there, the difference between adverbs and adjectives, adjectives give more information about a noun, whereas adverbs give more information about a verb, they tell us how this action happens. Excellent.

I'll be back with much more detail on those topics in a future video, but for now, I hope that that is a really lovely, simple explanation and a great introduction. Have a great day. Bye.