A2 · Elementary

Adjectives & Adverbs

“She is a careful driver” and “she drives carefully” say the same thing about the same person — but one word describes her and the other describes what she does. Learn to hear that difference and the right form picks itself.

Level: A2 quick · quickly · good · well Play · Practice · Score

The Grammar Transformer

Describe the person. Or the action.

Same woman, same skill, two sentences. Switch what you are describing and the word changes shape — except twice, and those two are the ones worth remembering.

She is a careful driver.

Structure:be + a/an + adjective + noun

An adjective describes a NOUN. Here it tells you what kind of driver she is, and it sits directly in front of the noun.

Got the difference? Jump to the practice →

The rules — with examples

One question sorts almost every case: is the word describing a thing or an action? Everything else on this page is spelling and a short list of exceptions.

Which word describes what

Adjective → a noun

what kind of thing or person

a quiet room
The room is quiet.

Adverb → a verb

how the action happens

She speaks quietly.
He answered politely.

Both, no change

hard · fast · late · early

a fast car / He drives fast.

The two-question test: if you can ask what kind? you need an adjective — “what kind of driver? a careful one”. If you can ask how? you need an adverb — “how does she drive? carefully”. Say the question out loud in your head and the ending follows.

Building an adverb: four spelling rules

+ lymost wordsslow → slowly

y → ilyends in a consonant + yhappy → happily

le → lyends in -lesimple → simply

ic → icallyends in -icautomatic → automatically

Two spellings worth memorizing: true drops its e → truly, and full drops an l → fully. Everything else follows the four rules above.

The exceptions to learn by heart

good → well

completely different word

She is a good cook. She cooks well. — “She cooks good” is the single most common mistake here.

hard / hardly

two different meanings

He works hard = a lot of effort. He hardly works = he almost never works. Adding -ly changes the meaning completely.

late / lately

two different meanings

She arrived late = not on time. I haven’t seen her lately = recently.

One more that catches people out: well is also an adjective meaning healthy. “I don’t feel well” is about your health; “I don’t sing well” is about your singing. Same word, two jobs.

Where each word goes

Adjective: before the noun, or after be

a beautiful garden / The garden is beautiful.

Note: never add -s to an adjective — beautiful gardens, not “beautifuls”

Adverb: after the verb, or at the end

He opened the door slowly. — not “he opened slowly the door”.

Note: keep the verb and its object together, then add the adverb

After look, feel, smell, taste, sound → adjective

The soup smells delicious. You look tired.

Why: these verbs describe the thing, not an action — not “smells deliciously”

Two or more adjectives follow a fixed order

a big old wooden table — not “a wooden old big table”.

Note: no commas needed for short strings like this

The order of adjectives

Native speakers never learn this list — they just hear when it is wrong. You can learn it directly instead.

Opinionlovely, boring → Sizebig, tiny → Ageold, new → Shaperound, square → Colorred, black → OriginFrench, Thai → Materialwooden, silk → NOUN

In practice: a lovely little old round red Italian wooden table.
You will almost never use more than two or three at once — and two is enough to hear the rule: a big red bus sounds right, “a red big bus” does not.

Quick way to remember it: the adjectives closest to the noun are the facts that are hardest to argue with — what it is made of, where it comes from, what color it is. The further left you go, the more the word is your opinion. Facts hug the noun; opinions sit out front.

When -ly is not an adverb

These words end in -ly and are adjectives

friendlylovelylonelysillyuglylikelyelderlydaily

You cannot trust the ending on its own. Friendly describes a person, not an action, so it is an adjective — and there is no word “friendlily”. When you need the adverb meaning, English uses a phrase instead: “she spoke to us in a friendly way”. The same goes for lovely and silly. Note that daily, weekly and early work as both: a daily newspaper, and the paper arrives daily.

Quick guide: describing a thing → adjective. Describing an action → adverb, usually + -ly. After be, look, feel, smell, taste → adjective. And learn three pairs cold: good/well, hard/hardly, late/lately.

Practice & score yourself

Ten questions — five multiple choice, five gap-fill. Instant scoring and a short explanation for every answer.

Your score

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Answer a question to begin.

The one rule to remember

Ask what the word is describing. A thing or a person → adjective: a careful driver. An action → adverb, and usually that means adding -ly: she drives carefully. One question, and the ending chooses itself.

Then keep three exceptions in your pocket. Good becomes well, not “goodly”. Hard does not change at all — and hardly is a different word meaning almost never. And after be, look, feel, smell, taste and sound, go back to the adjective: the soup smells delicious, never “deliciously”.

Ready to compare things? Try Comparatives & Superlatives → or turn the volume up with Intensifiers →

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