Language Curriculum: Adjectives

Adjectives describe or give information about nouns or pronouns.

For example:-

The grey dog barked. (The adjective grey describes the noun "dog".)

The good news is that the form of an adjective does not change. It does not matter if the noun being modified is male or female, singular or plural, subject or object.

Some adjectives give us factual information about the noun - age, size colour etc (fact adjectives - can't be argued with). Some adjectives show what somebody thinks about something or somebody - nice, horrid, beautiful etc (opinion adjectives - not everyone may agree).

If you are asked questions with which, whose, what kind, or how many, you need an adjective to be able to answer.

There are different types of adjectives in the English language:

• Numeric: six, one hundred and one
• Quantitative: more, all, some, half, more than enough
• Qualitative: colour, size, smell etc.
• Possessive: my, his, their, your
• Interrogative: which, whose, what
• Demonstrative: this, that, those, these

The articles a, an, and the and the possessives my, our, your, and their are also adjectives.

Adjectives can be used to describe lots of things, from physical size, age, shape, colour, material, to more abstract things like opinion, origin and purpose. We can use adjectives together to give a detailed description of something. Adjectives that express opinions usually come before all others, but it can sometimes depend on what exactly you want to emphasise.

For example:

"That nice, big, blue bag." (You like the bag.)
"That big, nice, blue bag." (You like the colour.)

When we group adjectives together there is a general rule for the position of each type adjective, these are:-

Position	1st*	2nd*	3rd	4th	5th	6th	7th	8th
	Opinion	Size	Age	Shape	Colour	Material	Origin	Purpose
	Nice	Small	Old	Square	Black	Plastic	British	Racing
	Ugly	Big	New	Circular	Blue	Cotton	American	Running

This is just a guide as you wouldn't normally see so many adjectives in one description.

For example:

• "She had a big, ugly, old, baggy, blue, cotton, British, knitting bag." Is grammatically correct but a bit too long-winded.

* You might swap opinion and fact adjectives depending on what you wish to emphasise:-

For example:

• "She had a long, ugly nose." emphasising the length of her nose.
• "He was a silly, little man." emphasising that the man was silly.

Possesive adjectives are used to show ownership or possession.

Subject pronoun	Possessive adjective
I	my
you	your
he	his
she	her
it	its
we	our
they	their

For example:

• I own a laptop. = It is my laptop.
• You own this computer (I presume). = It is your computer.
• My husband owns a car. = It is his car.
• My sister owns a house. = It is her house.
• My dog owns a collar. = It is its collar.
• We use this website. = It is our website.
• Manchester United own a football ground. = It is their football ground.

When we compare two things or people we look at what makes them different from each other.

For example:

Tall / Short

The man on the left is taller than the man on the right. 
The man on the right is shorter than the man on the left.

Fast / Slow

 

A car is faster than a bicycle. 
A bicycle is slower than a car.

Comparative adjectives are used to show what quality one thing has more or less than the other. They normally come before any other adjectives.

For example:

Big / Small

 

The red bag is bigger than the blue bag. 
The blue bag is smaller than the red bag.

Forming the comparative

Form	Rule	For example
Words of one syllable ending in 'e'.	Add -r to the end of the word.	wide - wider
Words of one syllable, with one vowel and one consonant at the end.	Double the consonant and add -er to the end of the word.	big - bigger
Words of one syllable, with more than one vowel or more than one consonant at the end.	Add - er to the end of the word.	high - higher
Words of two syllables, ending in 'y'.	Change 'y' to 'i', and add -er to the end of the word.	happy - happier
Words of two syllables or more, not ending in 'y'.	Place 'more' before the adjective.	beautiful - more beautiful

The following adjectives are exceptions to this rule:

• 'good' becomes 'better'
• 'bad' becomes 'worse'
• 'far' becomes 'farther' or 'further'

!Note - When comparing two things like this we put than between the adjective and the thing being compared.

For example:-

• "Mount Everest is higher than Mount Snowdon."
• "Arguably, Rome is more beautiful than Paris.

The superlative is used to say what thing or person has the most of a particular quality within a group or of its kind. Superlative adjectives normally come before any other adjectives.

		Snowdon is not the highest mountain in Britain, Ben Nevis is.
Mount Snowdon is 3,559 feet high.	Ben Nevis is 4,408 feet high.

Forming the superlative

Form	Rule	For example
Words of one syllable ending in 'e'.	Add -st to the end of the word.	wide - widest
Words of one syllable, with one vowel and one consonant at the end.	Double the consonant and add -est to the end of the word.	big - biggest
Words of one syllable, with more than one vowel or more than one consonant at the end.	Add - est to the end of the word.	high - highest
Words of two syllables, ending in 'y'.	Change 'y' to 'i', and add -est to the end of the word.	happy - happiest
Words of two syllables or more, not ending in 'y'.	Place 'the most' before the adjective.	beautiful - the most beautiful

The following adjectives are exceptions:

• 'good' becomes 'the best'
• 'bad' becomes 'the worst'
• 'far' becomes 'the furthest'

For example:

• "Jill is the best student in the class ."
• "Jack is the worst student in the class."
• "In our solar system the planet Pluto is the furthest planet from the Sun."

!Note - superlatives are usually preceded by 'the'.

For example:

• "The Rio de la Plata river, on the southeast coastline of South America, is the widest river in the world."
• According to the List of World records Carol Yager (1960-1994), from Michigan, is the fattest person ever to live, weighing 725 kg (1,600 lb).
• "Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world."
• "I think that Castle Combe is the prettiest village in England."
• "Arguably, Rome is the most beautiful city in the world."

Language Curriculum: Mood

English verbs have four moods: indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and infinitive.

Mood is the form of the verb that shows the mode or manner in which a thought is expressed.

1. Indicative Mood: expresses an assertion, denial, or question:

Little Rock is the capital of Arkansas.
Ostriches cannot fly.
Have you finished your homework?

2. Imperative Mood: expresses command, prohibition, entreaty, or advice:

Don’t smoke in this building.
Be careful!
Don’t drown that puppy!

3. Subjunctive Mood: expresses doubt or something contrary to fact.

Modern English speakers use indicative mood most of the time, resorting to a kind of “mixed subjunctive” that makes use of helping verbs:

If I should see him, I will tell him.

Americans are more likely to say:

If I see him, I will tell him.

The verb may can be used to express a wish:

May you have many more birthdays.
May you live long and prosper.

The verb were can also indicate the use of the subjunctive:

If I were you, I wouldn’t keep driving on those tires.
If he were governor, we’d be in better fiscal shape.

4. Infinitive Mood: expresses an action or state without reference to any subject. It can be the source of sentence fragments when the writer mistakenly thinks the infinitive form is a fully-functioning verb.

When we speak of the English infinitive, we usually mean the basic form of the verb with “to” in front of it: to go, to sing, to walk, to speak.

Verbs said to be in the infinitive mood can include participle forms ending in -ed and -ing. Verbs in the infinitive mood are not being used as verbs, but as other parts of speech:

To err is human; to forgive, divine. Here, to err and to forgive are used as nouns.

He is a man to be admired. Here, to be admired is an adjective, the equivalent of admirable. It describes the noun man.

He came to see you. Here, to see you is used as an adverb to tell why he came.

Language Curriculum: Verbs

Verbs are a class of words used to show the performance of an action (do, throw, run), existence (be), possession (have), or state (know, love) of a subject. To put it simply a verb shows what something or someone does.

Most statements in speech and writing have a main verb. These verbs are expressed in tenses which place everything in a point in time.

Verbs have moods, which indicate the viewpoint of the verb, whether it is a fact, a command or hypothetical.

Verbs have a voice too. The voice shows whether the subject of a sentence is carrying out an action, or is having an action carried out on it.

Verbs are conjugated (inflected) to reflect how they are used. There are two general areas in which conjugation occurs; for person and for tense .

Conjugation for tense is carried out on all verbs.  All conjugations start with the infinitive form of the verb.  The infinitive is simply the to form of the verb For example, to begin.  The present participle form (the -ing form), is formed by adding ing to the bare infinitive. For example, the present participle of the verb to begin is beginning. There are two other forms that the verb can take, depending on the tense type and time, the simple past form (began) and the past participle (begun). See here for a list of irregular verbs.

Conjugation for person occurs when the verb changes form, depending on whether it is governed by a first, second, or third person subject.  This gives three conjugations for any verb depending on who is acting as the subject of the verb.  For example, we have: to begin, you begin , and he begins.  Note that only the third conjunction really shows a difference.

While most English verbs simply do not show extensive conjugation forms for person, an exception is the verb to be.

Regular Verbs

Regular verbs are conjugated to easy to learn rules.

They all have a base form. e.g. to look

A gerund (ing) form where ing is added to the end of the verb. e.g. looking

An -s form where s is added to the end of the verb. e.g. looks

A past tense form where ed is added to the end of the verb. e.g. looked

A past participle form where ed is added to the end of the verb. e.g. looked

Irregular Verbs

They all have a base form. e.g. to run

A gerund (ing) form where ing is added to the end of the verb. e.g. running

An -s form where s is added to the end of the verb. e.g. runs

A past tense form which must be learnt. e.g. ran

A past participle form which must be learnt. e.g. run

Auxiliary Verbs

Auxiliary verbs are used together with a main verb to give grammatical information and therefore add extra meaning to a sentence. Information that is not given by the main verb.

They are used to form the passive voice.

They are used to form the continuous tense.

They are used to form the perfect tense.

Be, Do and Have are auxiliary verbs, they are irregular verbs and can be used as main verbs. The verbs 'to be' and 'to have' are the most commonly used auxiliary verbs and work alongside the main verbs in any statement.

Modal verbs are also auxiliary verbs, but will be treated separately, these are can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, and would, they differ from the others in that they can never function as a main verb.

Verbs - Finite / Non Finite

Finite Verbs

A finite verb (sometimes called main verbs) is a verb that has a subject, this means that it can be the main verb in a sentence. It shows tense (past / present etc) or number (singular / plural).

For example:

I live in Germay. (I is the subject - live describes what the subject does - live is a finite verb).

Non-Finite Verbs

A non-finite verb has no subject, tense or number. The only non-finite verb forms are the infinitive (indicated by to), the gerund or the participle.

For example:

I travelled to Germany to improve my German. (To improve is in the infinitive form).

Stative verbs are verbs that show a state and not an action.

You can group verbs that show a state in the following ways:-

Verbs that show thought - know, believe, undertand etc.
Verbs that show possession - have, own, want, contain etc.
Verbs that show senses - hear, see, smell etc.
Verbs that show emotion - love, hate, want, need etc.