Contributor: Delaine Thomas. Lesson ID: 12461
A verb is an action word; it tells what happened. An adverb (think, "add-verb") adds to the action by telling more about the action, like when, where, how, and how much. Act quickly to learn adverbs!
If this happened to you, you would probably find interesting ways to tell about it! Find out what happened to this dude while you study adverbs!
The biker in the picture above crashed his bike.
It is good that he was in the dirt and not on a harder surface or he could have really been hurt.
If you have experienced a similar crash, you probably will have a more accurate statement than the following:
After crossing the finish line, the biker crashed suddenly into the dirt.
The word crashed is the verb in the sentence, and suddenly describes how he crashed. Therefore, suddenly is an adverb.
An adverb is a word that describes or modifies a verb, adjective, and other adverbs.
Like adjectives, they can make your writing more precise by giving more information about the verb, adjective, or adverb it is describing. An adverb will tell you how, when, where, or how much.
The child speaks clearly.
Clearly tells how the child speaks.
He looked up.
Up tells where he looked.
John left early.
Early tells when John left.
There are also comparative and superlative forms of adverbs. The comparative form compares two things, and the superlative form of an adverb compares three or more things.
As with adjectives, when writing the comparative form, you would add an -er to the adverb and -est for the superlative form.
Take out a piece of paper and pencil and take notes on the ways adverbs are used in a sentence and how they are formed while watching Adverbs | Award Winning Understanding Adverb Teaching Video | What is an Adverb| from GrammarSongs by Melissa:
Remember, an adverb does not describe or modify a noun. An adverb modifies or describes a verb, adjective, or another adverb.
Continue to the Got It? section to practice identifying adverbs.