Basic adjectives
Правило
Adjectives describe people, places and things, following strict rules about word order and never taking plural forms.
Adjectives are descriptive words that modify nouns (people, places, things, and concepts). They provide specific details about color, size, shape, age, temperature, quality, and provenance. In English grammar, adjectives obey two universal structural rules: Rule 1: Fixed Position: (1) Attributive Position (Before the noun): Adjectives almost always stand directly before the noun they describe ("a red sports car", "a quiet suburban street", "an expensive leather watch"). (2) Predicative Position (After linking verbs): Adjectives can follow verbs of state and sensation such as be, look, feel, taste, smell, and sound ("The morning coffee is hot", "She looks genuinely happy", "This warm vegetable soup tastes delicious"). Rule 2: Invariable Form (No Plurals): Unlike languages where adjectives agree in gender and number with nouns, English adjectives never change form. They never take an -s suffix: "a young child" → "two young children" (never "youngs children"); "a blue shoe" → "two blue shoes" (never "blues shoes"). Modifying Adjectives with Degree Words: You can place adverbs of degree before adjectives to strengthen or soften their force: very ("The water is very cold"), really ("He is a really kind teacher"), quite ("The hotel room was quite large"). -ed vs. -ing Adjective Endings: Adjectives ending in -ed describe a conscious person's feelings or emotional state ("I am tired", "The student was bored"). Adjectives ending in -ing describe the person, object, or situation that generates that feeling ("The long journey was tiring", "The lecture was boring").
Запомни
- Adjectives sit before the noun or after linking verbs: a red door, the door is red.
- Adjectives never take a plural -s in English: two red doors, three expensive books.
- Adjectives ending in -ed describe feelings, while -ing adjectives describe the cause.
Частая ошибка, которой стоит избегать
Placing adjectives after the noun or adding a plural -s are common errors from other languages: always say a new car and two cheap tickets.
Guía visual
How to read this A1 topic
At A1, aim for one clear sentence: subject, verb, agreement, and a simple complement.
1. Find the subject
English normally needs an explicit subject before the verb.
It is cold.
2. Check the verb form
Be, have, and third-person -s carry a lot of early grammar.
She works here.
3. Keep a model sentence
Learn one short pattern and swap the words carefully.
I am a student.
Decision path before answering
Use these checks before choosing between close options.
- 1Mark the subject, main verb, object, and any connector.
- 2Underline the time expression or discourse clue.
- 3Reject any option with the wrong agreement, tense, article, pronoun case, or word order.
- 4Read the whole sentence once more for naturalness and register.
Contrasts that often decide the answer
Event or background
Simple forms move events forward; continuous forms show an action in progress.
I left while she was talking.
Fact or stance
Modals, hedges, and reporting structures show how certain or responsible the speaker sounds.
This may indicate a problem.
Clause or compressed phrase
Advanced writing often compresses full clauses into participle, noun, or prepositional phrases.
Having reviewed the data, we revised the plan.
Примеры
- 1They live in a beautiful historic house located near the winding river.
- 2Peter bought two comfortable leather chairs for his home study room.
- 3The hot tomato soup smells wonderful on a cold winter afternoon.
- 4She is a very careful driver who always observes the local speed limits.
- 5These hiking boots are quite expensive, but they are exceptionally durable.
- 6The young children are very excited about visiting the city zoo tomorrow.
- 7The history lecture was remarkably interesting and deeply informative.
- 8He felt exhausted and tired after working hard in the community garden.
- 9We met a friendly local woman who kindly directed us to the train station.
- 10There are three tall pine trees growing directly in front of the building.
Исключения
Adjectives follow indefinite pronouns rather than preceding them: with words like something, anything, nothing, someone, anyone, everyone, the adjective comes after ("I want to eat something hot", "Did you see anyone interesting?", never "hot something"). A small set of adjectives can only be used in predicative position after a verb (afraid, alone, asleep, awake, alive): say "The toddler is asleep", never "an asleep toddler".
Частые ошибки
(1) Pluralizing adjectives: "She wears expensives sunglasses." → "She wears expensive sunglasses." (English adjectives are invariable and never take -s). (2) Placing adjectives after nouns: "I bought a car red." → "I bought a red car." (Descriptive adjectives must precede the noun). (3) Confusing -ed and -ing: "The film was very bored." → "The film was very boring." (-ing describes the nature of the movie; -ed describes human feelings).
Проверь себя
Choose five objects near you and describe them aloud using two adjectives for each object, then practise.
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