Most of the time these adjectives and
adverbs here cause very little trouble,
but sometimes they're a little bit
tricky. So when we use them regularly we
just use adjectives to modify nouns, and
you might say something like "good game!"
if you're congratulating somebody. "Good
game" or "bad game" -- "game" is a noun and "good"
or "bad" describes it. With adverbs we tend
to modify verbs and a few other parts of
speech as well. You could say something
like "that went badly"
and in this case "badly" is describing
"went." Went how? It went badly. So far
so good. That's not too difficult I
suppose, but the trouble comes in
especially with linking verbs. And just
to remind you of a few basic points of
grammar here, a linking verb is a verb
that acts a bit like an equation, like an
equals sign, and it connects a subject
with what's called a subject complement,
which consists typically of a noun and
it's modifiers or an adjective. And this
noun or adjective modifies or describes
the subject. So you could say x
equals y. If we look at some
sentences with these adjectives and
adverbs then, you could say something
like "I am good." Somebody says "how are you
doing?" "I am good." Is that acceptable? Well
it does follow this pattern, so if you
say "I,"
there's our subject, "am" is a linking verb,
and "good" is the adjective that describes
"I." So that's fine. [It] seems a bit weird maybe,
it sounds a bit casual, but it is
actually acceptable. Here's another
example. What if you say "You did good"?
Would that be acceptable? Because you
hear this all the time - you
did good. Well, this time it's not
acceptable because "did" is not a linking
verb, and we need "well." You did "well." And
that's the basic distinction, that with a
linking verb you're allowed to use the
adjective form. With the regular kind of
verb you need the adverb form. Alright,
let's give a couple more examples just
to see how this works. Let's say you say
"She performed ...
good." Would that be acceptable? Well, no, we
need "well" because "performed" is the main
verb here. It's not a linking verb, and if
we say "performed how?" we need "well." Okay,
so "good" would be bad. Let's have a look at
another one. What if you say "She felt bad."
Would that be allowed or should it be
"She felt badly"? Well, here's where we
get into a little bit more trouble.
Here's another wrench that we're going
to throw into things. "Felt" is a linking
verb, so the linking verbs are often
forms of "to be" or they're often forms of
the different verbs that have to do with
the senses, like taste and touch and so
on. So "felt" is a linking verb. It's like
an equal sign, and that's why "bad" is
technically correct, but in a few
instances you are allowed to use "badly."
if you say "she felt badly" then what you
are actually saying is a little bit
different from describing kind of, you
know, her health. It's not talking so much
about that she has a stomach ache and she
felt bad, you know that kind of bad, but
if you say "she felt badly" then you mean
more something like she felt apologetic
like she had done something wrong, and
that's where "badly" changes the meaning a
little bit and is probably more
modifying "felt" than "she." Okay, there's one
other case one other wrench we're going
to throw into this, and this has to do
with "well." So we said before that you can
say "I am good" but "good" here is a
fairly general description. If you're
talking specifically about health then
you should be using "well." Then you
should actually be using "well" because
"well" is the word we use to
describe our health. To sum up
then, if this kind of makes sense to you,
with a linking verb we tend to use the
adjective form, but there are a couple of
exceptions to that exception. The one
exception is with "badly." If you're
talking about feeling badly then
sometimes you can use badly when you're
talking about those apologetic kind of
situations, and if you talk about your
health specifically, then "well" is often
more appropriate than "good." But in other
cases with the linking verb you are
allowed to use the adjective and if you
keep that in mind you'll be able to
avoid some awkward grammatical problems.