Grade 10 English: Adverbs – Definition, Types & Examples

Adverbs are the words that modify a verb, an adjective, or another adverb in a sentence. 

Adverbs of Time: 

Adverbs of time describe when the action occurs. Although there are many prepositions that indicate when something happened, they are always followed by objects, making it easy to identify when a word is an adverb. 

Examples: 

• I have read this book before. 
• Katie recently relocated to France. 
• I have not heard from him lately. 
• You haven’t contacted me since. 

Adverbs of Frequency: 

Adverbs of frequency show us how often something happens, like: 

• She called me twice. 
• They seldom come here. 
• The landlord called again. 

• I have seen this movie once. 

Adverbs of Place:  

Adverbs of place show us where the action has taken place. We easily tend to mix them up with prepositions, which describe where nouns are located. As mentioned earlier, prepositions are followed by objects, whereas place adverbs are not. 

Examples: 

• Come here. 

• The puppy followed me everywhere. 
• I looked up. 
• The car raced away. 

Adverbs of Manner: 

Adverbs of manner describe how or in what manner  was the action done. The adverbs that end with -ly generally come under this category. 

Examples: 

• Martha writes brilliantly. 
• Rick works hard. 
• I slept soundly last night. 
• The novel is well written. 

Adverbs of Degree: 

Adverbs of degree or quantity provide us information about the intensity of the verb in the sentence. They describe how much, or in what degree or to what extent something has occurred, like: 

• We are fully prepared. 
• She is altogether mistaken. 
• The apple is almost ripe. 

• We are so glad that you have come. 

Adverbs and sentences: 

Some adverbs can modify entire sentences. They usually stand at the beginning of the sentences to modify the entire sentence, rather than a particular word. Unsurprisingly, they are known as sentence adverbs. Typical examples of sentence adverbs include fortunately, generally, interestingly, appropriately, etc. Sentence adverbs describe a general feeling about all of the information in the sentence rather than a specific thing in the sentence. 

Examples: 

• Fortunately, I was able make it just before time. 

• Luckily, I escaped without getting caught. 
• Probably, you are mistaken.