The Communicative Grammar of English Workbook - Edward Woods, Rudy Coppieters 2002
7.1. Adverbs
Unit seven. Adverbs, adverbials and prepositions
Sections 464-469
Most adverbs are formed from adjectives by adding the suffix -ly: complete ^ completely.
Adverbs can function as
- adverbials in sentences:
Everything was carefully planned/planned carefully.
- pre-modifiers of
- adjectives and other adverbs:
John was extremely angry/He reacted extremely angrily.
This is too weak an argument to convince anybody. /How painful a reminder it was!
- prepositions, determiners, numerals and pronouns:
The pub is just round the corner/It is just two hundred yards away.
- nouns or noun phrases:
It was rather a disappointment./What a painful reminder it was!
- post-modifiers of
- adjectives and other adverbs:
That’s not good enough./Oddly enough, he didn’t turn up.
- certain quantifiers, pronouns and interrogatives:
I met somebody else./Who else was there?
- nouns or noun phrases:
Our journey home was uneventful. / We had left the day before.
- complements of prepositions:
Keep all that stuff for later./The snake was in there.
Task one *
Identify the adverbs (12 in all) in the following text.
Saying Tajikistan’s borders are “soft” would be too kind. Foreign diplomats and local journalists say the place is effectively run by a coalition of feudal warlords largely financed, directly or otherwise, by the drug trade. The country derives fully a third of its GDP from the heroin industry, according to U.N. estimates. Even so, Tajikistan’s senior narcotics officer must be doing something right. Why else would a gang of gunmen have attacked his apartment in Dushanbe back in March?
(from Newsweek, 17 September 2001, p. 22)
Task two **
Classify the above adverbs on the basis of their function, i.e. in terms of the elements they modify.
Example: I knew pretty well what I was doing.
→ (pretty) well: adverbial in sentence
→ pretty: premodifier (of adverb)
Task three **
Fill the gaps in the following text, using one of the adverbs below:
Note: never and still are to be used twice
As ... as roles are concerned, most people assume that a family’s financial situation is not ... the responsibility of the man. On the other hand, they would ... compliment the woman, not the man, on a ... decorated or -kept house. Everyday care of the children is ... seen as ... the woman’s responsibility. Although ... as many women have jobs as men, ... half of the jobs done by women are part-time. In fact, the majority of mothers with children under the age of twelve either have no job or work ... during school hours. Men ... take a ... active domestic role than they did forty years ... . Some things, ..., ... seem to change. A comparison of child-rearing habits of the 1950s and the 1980s showed that the proportion of men who ... changed a baby’s nappy had remained the same (40 per cent)!
(from James O’Driscoll, Britain, p. 51)
Task four **
Replace the underlined parts by alternative collocations (with adverbs) which are equivalent in meaning.
Example: We had very little time to make up our minds.
→ We had hardly any time to make up our minds.
- I want to spend my holidaysat some other placethis year.
- The organization wassufficiently powerfulto strike back again.
- What an impertinentyoung man Tony is!
- There werevery fewpeople around at that moment.
- I wasfamiliar enoughwith local customs to appreciate their importance.
- How ludicrous anidea it was!
- Surprisingly, there washardly anyfood left in the refrigerator.
- Under the circumstances there wasno other personI could turn to.
- Wilma wastoo inexperienced apilot to fly a jumbo jet.
- Ronald isan honest stockbroker and would never cheatyou out of your money.