ABE English Tutorials/simple sentences/Adding modifiers

Adding modifiers

You have learned that a basic sentence has a subject noun and a verb. In this very simple sentence,

The woman walks.

... "walks" is the verb and "the woman" is the subject noun.

The word walks is a verb because it is an action, somebody or thing doing something.

A noun is the name given to a person, a place, or a thing.

For example, you are a student. You are studying at a computer. and the computer is on a desk These are nouns. Your name is a noun.

This is a complete sentence, but it is a rather simple. We can add information:

The tall woman walks.

Or maybe...

The tall, blonde woman walks.

Words that describe a noun are called adjectives, There are thousands of adjectives to choose from. Here are just a few examples:

• beautiful
• ugly
• short
• long red
• blue
• magenta
• aqua one
• two
• two hundred
• six million good
• righteous
• small
• gigantic

Of course, you can add adjectives to just about any noun, not just the subject. The adjectives have been bolded in these examples:

• The little boy hated the rainy day.
• Two black cats jumped up on the broken fence.
• My oldest brother is a good gardener.

Find the adjectives in the following sentences:

• That new house has five bathrooms.
• Four heavy books were on the shelf.
• Did you see the hilarious movie?
• The beautiful, little town was hit by a fierce winter storm.

Here are the same sentences, with the adjectives shown in bold:

• That new house has five bathrooms.
• Four heavy books were on the shelf.
• Did you see the hilarious movie?
• The beautiful little town was hit by a fierce winter storm.

Let's look back at our original sentence:

The woman walks.

We added adjectives to make the noun (woman) more interesting. But we can also add words that will tell us more about the verb (walks):

The tall woman walks quickly. Or: The tall woman walks slowly but confidently.

Words that describe the verb are called adverbs. Adverbs tell when, where and how an action was done. Here are just a few adverbs that we use often:

• now
• yesterday
• later
• here outside
• well
• happily
• there faithfully
• barely
• completely
• sadly immediately
• carefully
• badly
• cheerfully

As you can see, many adverbs end in -ly. In fact, you can make just about any adjective into an adverb, just by adding -ly: Adjective Adverb

• beautiful
• nice
• kind
• outrageous beautifully
• nicely
• kindly
• outrageously

Find the adverbs in the following sentences:

1. The injured animal fought fiercely.
2. I put my car keys here on the table.
3. Julian tended the garden well.
4. Politely but firmly, Kira insisted on seeing the teacher.

Here are the answers:

1. fiercely -- tells how the animal fought
2. here -- tells where I left my keys
3. well -- tells how Julian tended the garden
4. politely and firmly -- tells how Kira insisted

Did you notice the two words, good and well? Good is an adjective: it describes what someone or something is like. Well is an adverb: it describes how something was done. Many people use good when they should be using well:

Incorrect: She did her work good. (good can only be used to describe someone or something. You can't use it to describe how something was done.) Correct: She did her work well. (well is describing how she did her work.)

Adjectives and Adverbs add information to a sentence. But they cannot take the place of the subject or verb!

If you're ready for the homework, click here.