Key considerations

The term ‘adverb’ refers to different kinds of words with quite different functions. For teaching purposes it is generally necessary to specify particular types of adverb (e.g. adverbs of manner), rather than refer to adverbs all together as though they were a unified class of words.

Adverbs can occupy a range of positions in the sentence, and choosing where to place them is often a major problem for learners.

The meaning of certain adverbs (e.g. yet, already, ever) is complex, and we may want to avoid teaching these at the same time as other major grammatical features (e.g. tenses).

The meaning of certain adverbs (e.g. yet, already, ever) is complex, and we may want to avoid teaching these at the same time as other major grammatical features (e.g. tenses).

What are adverbs?

What do they do?

The popular definition of adverbs as words that ‘modify a verb, an adjective or another adverb’ is neither accurate nor very helpful. Whereas it is relatively easy to define and describe what a noun or an adjective is, we can only usefully define and describe different categories of adverb. It is sometimes helpful to think of ‘adverb’ as a ‘dustbin’ term – all the types of word that don’t fit neatly into other categories such as noun, adjective, verb, preposition are lumped together as adverbs.

The following is a useful way of dividing adverbs:

Focusing adverbs and attitude markers can also be classified as discourse markers.

Many types of adverb can be seen in the following text, in which a family therapist is being interviewed about jealousy. The adverbs in the text are printed in italics. Each of them is classified below so that you know how these terms are used in this chapter.