ADJECTIVES - Basic English Grammar - Parts of Speech Lesson 4 - What is an Adjective? - Grammar

Hello and welcome back to our parts of

speech series

My name is Ganesh and in this lesson

we're going to learn all about

adjectives. In this lesson I will tell

you what is an adjective and what are

the two main types of adjectives and

then we will focus on using adjectives

correctly and how to avoid common

mistakes that students make with them. We

will look at three areas: ed and ing

adjectives, comparatives and superlatives

and the order of adjectives - that is when

you have more than one adjective in a

sentence, which should you put first

second etc. So we'll talk about avoiding

errors in these three areas. Before we

start just remember if you have any

questions at all you can ask me in the

comments section below and I will talk

to you there.

OK so first of all what is an adjective?

Well that's easy - an adjective is a word

that gives information about a noun or

pronoun. In grammar we say that an

adjective modifies a noun or pronoun

modify here means to change the noun or

pronoun by giving more information about

it.

For example take a look at this sentence

There are three small black wooden

chairs in this room. Focus on the noun

chairs and can you tell me which

adjectives modify - that is give more

information - about chairs? The adjectives

are three, small, black and wooden. These

adjectives answer questions like How

many? What size? What color? What material?

etc. Now in this example the adjectives

occur before the noun but they can also

appear after the noun or pronoun like in

this example - The food was hot and

delicious. Here the adjectives hot and

delicious appear after the noun food and

notice that we use the linking verb be -

past tense was - to connect the noun and

the adjectives.

OK now that you know what an adjective

is let's talk about the two types of

adjectives in English

There are two main types of adjectives

in English - these are called determiners

and descriptive adjectives. Or as I like

to say less interesting and more

interesting adjectives. I say that

descriptive adjectives are more

interesting because these are what we

commonly think of as adjectives - words

like beautiful, big, small, tall, short, blue,

red etc. So what are determiners then? Well

determiners are a small group of grammar

words that act as adjectives. Words like

my, our, your, his, her etc. are determiners

When I say - That's my car, for example, the

word my shows that I'm not talking about

any car - I'm talking about one particular

car - my car - so the word my acts as an

adjective by giving information about

the noun car. In the same way the words

this, that, these and those also act as

adjectives. Also the question words what,

which and whose can be determiners. If I

asked - Which team do you think will win

the next match? - the word which asks for

information about team. Team is a noun

so which is an adjective. Quantity words

like numbers and quantity expressions

such as a few, some and many are

determiners as well. And finally articles

that is the words

a, an and the are also considered

adjectives because if I said - A window is

broken - it could be any window but if I

said - The window is broken - we both know

which window I'm talking about so

articles give us information about nouns

and so they're also adjectives. Now all

determiners are adjectives but we will

discuss these in other lessons because

each one of them is a big topic. In this

lesson we're going to focus on the

really interesting adjectives that is

descriptive

adjectives and we will look at how to

avoid common errors with them.

Now in English there are lots and lots

of descriptive adjectives - some of them

are formed from nouns, verbs and even

other adjectives. These are usually

straightforward meaning that they're

easy to use but one area where students

commonly make mistakes is adjectives

formed from verbs using the endings ed

and ing. Have a look at this chart - on the

left you see three ing adjectives and on

the right three ed adjectives. The

adjectives boring and board are formed

from the verb bore, confusing and confused

from the verb confuse and exciting and

excited form from the verb excite. Now

you see three sentences on the screen. In

each sentence I want you to put an ing

adjective in one blank and the ed

adjective in the other blank. There's a

clue at the end of each sentence to help

you. Stop the video now if you'd like

think about your answers then play the

video and check. OK now before I give

you the answers

let's first understand the difference

between ed and ing adjectives - the

difference is this -

ing adjectives always show cause or

reason and ed adjectives show effect or

result, so in the first sentence

My wife and I went to see a movie. The

movie was boring, so we were bored.

The movie was the reason or cause and

our feeling - bored - was the result or the

effect. In the same way in number 2 - The

students felt really confused because

the professor's lecture was so confusing.

And in number 3 - The story was

exciting and the children were excited

to hear it. Did you get all of these

right?

OK so just remember that ing adjectives

will always express cause and ed

adjectives will express effect

Let's now turn to the

second area where mistakes are very

common and that is comparatives and

superlatives

What are comparatives and superlatives?

Well these are words that help you to

compare nouns - people, places, animals

things etc and we do that using

adjectives. Comparatives are

found in this form - more or less + an

adjective + than or as + adjective +

as and this means that the two nouns we

are comparing are equal. Superlatives

appear as most or least + adjective

To understand these we're going to take

the example of some popular cars - the

Honda Civic, the Ford Mustang and the

Chevrolet Corvette. Let's say that

Civic is $20,000, the Mustang is 45,000

and the Corvette is $60,000

Now let's compare these cars

using the adjective expensive. On the

screen there are a few sentences and

once again I would like you to fill in

the gaps with the correct comparative or

superlative form. Pause the video if you

want, try the exercise and then play the

video and check. Alright let's look at

the answers - The Corvette is more

expensive than the Mustang. So that means

The Mustang is less expensive than the

Corvette. But The Mustang is more

expensive than the Honda Civic, so The

Civic is less expensive than the Mustang.

The Corvette is the most expensive of the

three cars and The Civic is the least

expensive of the three cars

Remember I told you we could also use

the form as + adjective + as to mean

that two nouns are equal in some way?

Well let's say that the Ferrari is also

$60,000, that means the

price of the Ferrari and the Corvette

are the same so we can say - The Ferrari

is as expensive

as the Corvette. So what kinds of mistakes

students make with comparatives and

superlatives? Well mistakes commonly

occur in the ER EST and irregular forms

of adjectives. With some adjectives

instead of saying more and most we add

the endings ER and EST. For example we

don't say more cheap, we say cheaper and

we say cheapest not most cheap. In the

same way we have big bigger biggest

small smaller smallest and so on. Some

adjectives are called irregular because

you cannot guess their comparative and

superlative forms. For example to compare

using the adjective good we don't say

good gooder and goodest - we say better and

best. Similarly do you know the

comparative and superlative forms of bad?

Bad worse and worst. So with these in

mind here are a few example sentences

all of them have mistakes in them. I

would like you to stop the video now

think about how you would correct these

sentences and then play the video and

check. OK in the first sentence the

error is that an ER form - taller - is used

along with more. Remember that the word

taller means more tall so if you say

more taller that's like saying more more

tall which doesn't make sense so the

correct way to say this is to just say

Maya is taller and Sarah. Remember that

whenever you use an er form don't put

more before it. In the same way when you

have an EST form don't put most in front

of it. So in number 2 we have an EST form -

richest - but we also have most. We'll need

to remove that so - Bill Gates is the

richest man

in the world. In number three the problem is

slightly different because we have less

we cannot say less easier because again

easier means more easy so it's like

saying less more easy which makes no

sense. A better way to say this would be

Learning Korean is more difficult than

learning Spanish - instead you could also

say harder or even - Learning Korean isn't

as easy as learning Spanish. And finally

what about number four? Here

the problem is the word beautifulest

actually there's no such word. We cannot

say beautifuler and beautifuler - the

adjective beautiful does not have those

forms

instead we have to say more beautiful

and most beautiful so - This is the most

beautiful garden I have ever seen.

Alright so remember not to make any of

these mistakes.

Let's now move on and look at the third

and final area where students commonly

make mistakes with adjectives and that

is the order of adjectives

What do I mean by order of adjectives?

Well in English when you have more than

one adjective describing a noun there's

usually a fixed order in which to put

those adjectives and the mistake that

students often make is that they

sometimes put adjectives in the wrong

order

Let's take an example - In my home I have

a tablecloth - you know a cloth that you

put on a table before you put any food

on the table - this table cloth is from

France, it's blue in color

it's not very big - it's small and it's

also quite old

It's made from cotton, oh its round in shape

and it's beautiful

Now your job is to put all of these

adjectives in the correct order before

the noun tablecloth. Pause the video if

you want, think about the order and then

play the video again and check. Alright

here's how you order adjectives in

English - if we have a determiner we put

it first

remember that determiners are grammar

words that act as adjectives. In this

sentence the determiner is a so it's at

the beginning of the sentence. e then

say our opinion - in this case that's the

word beautiful, then comes size - small

then shape - round. After that we put age, in

this case - old, then comes color - blue and

then origin - my tablecloth is from France

so French. We can then say what material

its made of - cotton, and finally we can

include its purpose if we want. Now if we

were talking about a cleaning liquid for

example the word cleaning would be its

purpose. In the case of the tablecloth we

don't have a purpose so we don't need to

include it.

So the final order of

adjectives here is - In my home I have a

beautiful small round old blue French

cotton tablecloth.

OK let me say here that it's not very

common to have so many adjectives in one

sentence and it's not good because for

your listener

it's too much information. But this

example was just to show you how we

order adjectives in English. So now on

the screen there are a couple more

examples

your job is to put the adjectives in the

correct order in each sentence. Stop the

video, think about your answer, then play

the video again and check. OK in the

first sentence we should say - Yesterday I

met a well-dressed young Japanese man.

The word well-dressed is an opinion so

it comes first, age comes next - young, and

finally origin - Japanese. In number 2 -

Jared owns two expensive yellow German

sports cars. Notice here that sports is

the purpose so it comes last.

Did you get both of those right? If you

did - fantasticm, but if you didn't don't

worry because this topic is often quite

difficult at the beginning but you will

get better at it with time and practice

OK before we finish this lesson let's

do a quick recap of what we've learned

here today.

We first learned about the two main

types of adjectives - determiners which

are a group of grammar words that act as

adjectives and descriptive adjectives -

what we can think of as the real

adjectives. Then we looked at ed and ing

adjectives - remember that

ing adjectives show cause or reason and

ed adjectives show effect or result. Then

we turned to comparatives and

superlatives.

Do you remember the common errors that

we discussed? The errors are using er

forms with more and est forms with most.

Remember not to do that

And finally we learned the order of

adjectives - determiner, opinion, size, shape,

age, color, origin, material and purpose

The error is to mix up this order so

it's a good idea for you to memorize it

Alright i hope you enjoyed this lesson

and learned a lot from it

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and I will see you in the next lesson