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