An Introduction To English Adverbs

Adverbs are one of the main groups of words you can find in English and they are going to help you take a simple sentence and make it more detailed.

They can really enrich your English and they are pretty straightforward to use, so let’s look at what they are and how you can use them.

What Are Adverbs?

The main purpose of an adverb is to modify a verb, which really means to give it more detail.

They Add-to-verbs.

They can also modify adjectives and even other adverbs, but the majority of the time they will be used to add detail to verbs, such as when, how, where or how much the verb happens.

The Different Types Of Adverbs (and Where They Are Positioned in Sentences)

As I mentioned above, adverbs can add detail to verb, and you can break this down into different types. This is relevant as you are going to end up using a lot of the same adverbs with the same types of verbs, and more importantly, where you place these in a sentence may change.

Adverbs of Manner

When we say Adverbs of Manner, we really mean “in what manner did the verb happen” …which is kind of the fancy way of just asking “how”.

These adverbs explain how a verb happened and are things like: slowly, softly, harshly, quickly, calmly.

They usually go after the main verb in a sentence:

I was walking slowly.

He spoke harshly.

Adverbs of Time

Adverbs of Time of course refer to when the verb happened and you will see words like: now, recently, earlier, later

These can be found both before and after the verb, it really depends on the context of the sentence.

I spoke to him recently.

I recently spoke to him.

I need to look into these more, as every example I can think of, seems to suggest the order in the sentence isn’t too important, but I am certain there will be some examples where this doesn’t quite work.  

Adverbs of Frequency

Adverbs of Frequency are kind of linked to time, but it is more explaining how often a verb happens and uses words like: again, always, never, normally, every

The adverbs can actually be divided into two categories definite and indefinite.

Adverbs of definite frequency 

These give more detail about how often something happens, and can be clearly measured on a timescale and can usually be found at the end of the sentence.

These are words like: hourly, daily, monthly.

Adverbs of indefinite frequency

These also give detail about how often something happens, but they cannot be measured as easily and are a little vaguer with the timescale. These words come before the main verb.

These are words like: always, never, sometimes 

Adverbs of Degree

Adverbs of Degree means “to what degree did it happen” and can also be seen as how intense was the verb.

This uses words like: just, hardly, very

These are usually found before the main verb.

Adverbs of Place

Adverbs of Place tell us where the verb happened and will include words like: above, below, inside, outside, there

These are usually found after the main verb.

Adverbs of Purpose

Adverbs of purpose, sometimes called adverbs of reason tell us why something happened.

These can be a little confusing as they can also be conjunction adverbs, or short phrases, called adverbial phrases.

These include words like: since, therefore.

Conjunctive Adverbs

These adverbs work as conjunctions, but technically they are adverbs and you will see them as words like: Anyway, meanwhile, otherwise

These are going to be found in more complex sentences, where two parts are linked with the conjunctive adverb.

Conclusion

As you can see, adverbs are pretty important and will very easily add a lot of complexity and description to your English sentences.

I think on initial reading they can seem really complicated due to all the different types, but you will quickly realise they are not too bad and just learning a small handful of them can really increase your ability to communicate.

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