Adjectives - English grammar tutorial video lesson

Adjectives video lesson. This lesson is about adjectives.

Take a look at these sentences:

She is a beautiful singer

He became poor after the war.

Both the underlined words are what we call it adjectives. In this lesson, I am going to show you what adjectives exactly are. I am going to explain something about the construction, which we call the + adjective and I am going to take you through some common confusables.

What are adjectives?

Adjectives give information about a noun or a pronoun so a noun can be dog, cat and a pronoun can be he, she, it, him, her etc. This information can either be one word or an entire clause or phrase. And a clause or a phrase is a part of a sentenc.e For example he's talented. Talented says something about the pronoun he.

My trousers are white. White says something about my trousers my trousers here being a noun.

My aunt, who is quite old, came to visit us. Here the underlines who is quite old can also be concerned as an adjective, because it says something extra about my aunt. Here it is clause and we call it a relative clause here. 

Now where do we place adjectives?

We place adjectives generally before a noun.

For example:

He's a talented football player.

My right leg is broken.

Leg is the noun, right is the adjective.

We place the adjective after a verb when it is part of a predicate and predicate are all the verbs in a sentence.

For example:

This building can never be old.

Old obviously says something about the building, but because we have a predicate here so several verbs and it is part of the predicate, we put it at the end sentence.

Now let's take a look at the + adjective structure.

When describing a certain group the 'the + adjective' construction is used.

For example:

The English eat a hearty breakfast.

Or the rich get richer every year, while the poor get poorer.

So we use this for an entire group so this could also be the French, the Dutch, the Thai

the Chinese, the Brazilians, for example.

 

Now let's take a look at some common confusables.

For instance the word poor.

He is a poor boy.

This means he has no money but 

Her hearing is poor.

This means she can't hear very well.

Also the word 'small':

Their farm is small.

Says something about the size but

They are small farmers.

This does not mean that there is very little people but it says something about their farm occupation so they probably have a small piece of land, which they work on also the word mean.

He's mean with his money.

Obviously, means that he doesn't like to spend his money but he is a mean man means that he is not kind.