Adverbs of Manner Exercises

What adverbs of manner do

An adverb of manner tells us how an action is done. In She types quickly, the word quickly describes the way she types. Other examples are carefully, loudly, happily, badly and well.

Adverbs of manner usually describe verbs. They are one of several adverb types. Others include adverbs of time (yesterday), place (here), frequency (often) and degree (very, quite).

How to form them

Most adverbs of manner are made by adding -ly to an adjective:

• quick → quickly
• careful → carefully
• slow → slowly

A few spelling changes apply:

• Adjectives ending in -y change y to i: happy → happily, easy → easily, angry → angrily.
• Adjectives ending in -le drop the e and add y: gentle → gently, simple → simply.

Irregular forms and tricky pairs

Some adverbs of manner do not end in -ly.

Two pairs are easy to confuse because the -ly form has a different meaning:

• hard / hardly. She worked hard means she put in a lot of effort. She hardly worked means she worked very little.
• late / lately. He arrived late means after the expected time. He has been tired lately means recently.

Where to put the adverb

Adverbs of manner most often come after the verb, or after the verb and its object:

• She sings beautifully.
• He opened the door slowly.

Do not put the adverb between a verb and its direct object. He opened slowly the door is not natural English.

Sometimes an adverb comes before the verb for emphasis or in a more literary style: She quickly closed the window. When a sentence has two verbs, the position can change the meaning: They accepted the offer immediately and moved out is not the same as They accepted the offer and moved out immediately.

Adverb or adjective?

Adjectives describe nouns. Adverbs describe verbs (and also adjectives or other adverbs).

• She is a careful driver. (adjective describing driver)
• She drives carefully. (adverb describing drives)

After linking verbs such as be, seem, look, sound, smell, taste and feel, use an adjective when you are describing the subject: The soup smells wonderful. They seem bored. Use an adverb when you are describing the way an action is done: She smelled the soup carefully.

Manner vs degree (and a note on adverb clauses)

Adverbs of manner say how something is done. Adverbs of degree say how much: very, quite, almost, too, extremely. They often describe adjectives or other adverbs: very quickly uses very (degree) with quickly (manner).

Adverb clauses are a different thing. They are whole clauses that work as adverbs, for example when the bell rang (time) or as if she had never left (manner). If you want to practise recognising clauses, see the page on independent clause activities.

Exercise 1: Adjective or adverb?

Choose the correct word.

1. She sings (beautiful / beautifully).
2. He is a (careful / carefully) driver.
3. The soup smells (wonderful / wonderfully).
4. They worked (hard / hardly) all week.
5. The test was (easy / easily).
6. She answered the question (correct / correctly).
7. The children played (quiet / quietly) in the garden.
8. You did (good / well) in the exam.

Exercise 2: Make the adverb

Write the adverb of manner for each adjective.

1. happy
2. gentle
3. angry
4. fast
5. good
6. simple

Exercise 3: Find and fix the mistake

Each sentence has one error. Rewrite it correctly.

1. She opened quickly the door.
2. He plays the guitar good.
3. They are waiting patient.
4. The car moved slow down the street.

Exercise 4: Write your own

Write one sentence for each adverb: carefully, well, loudly, hard. Then check that each adverb describes a verb and is not placed between the verb and its object.

Answers

Exercise 1

1. beautifully
2. careful (describes the noun driver)
3. wonderful (smell is used as a linking verb here, describing the soup)
4. hard (hardly would mean “almost not”)
5. easy (follows was, a linking verb)
6. correctly
7. quietly
8. well (the adverb for good)

Exercise 2

1. happily
2. gently
3. angrily
4. fast
5. well
6. simply

Exercise 3

1. She opened the door quickly.
2. He plays the guitar well.
3. They are waiting patiently.
4. The car moved slowly down the street. (In informal speech slow is sometimes used as an adverb, but slowly is the standard form in writing.)

Exercise 4

Answers will vary. Example sentences: He packed the glasses carefully. She speaks Spanish well. The crowd cheered loudly. They studied hard for the exam.

If you need more error-correction practice beyond adverbs, try the sentence correction exercises, or compare this topic with -ing and -ed adjectives, another pair of forms that learners often confuse.