Adjectives and Adverbs

It's easy to identify adjectives and adverbs.

No, it isn't.

Well, it's easy to ID an adjective, anyway.

First of all, you'll always find it stuck to some noun.

Last of all, you'll always find it stuck to some noun.

Always, you find an adjective: it's stuck to some noun.

Can't emphasize it enough.

What I can emphasize is the circle of reasoning that proves you've got both a noun and its stuck-on adjective.

First of all, you know when a noun is a person, place or thing. You've got to. You're not getting over 600 without knowing that.

Next step: Recognize idea nouns by their noun endings, aka suffixes.

For example, a revolution may be a series of fights, an armed protest that leads to a change of government, or maybe not even a conflict, but a series of events in a changing world, such as the Industrial Revolution.

Meditation is an action consisting of an attitude; or a series of practices; a sequence of mind and body interactions.

Idea nouns include most words that end in -ion, -ment, -nce, -ity, -ness.

And many more!

But wait! We were talking about adjectives, weren't we? The American Revolution. The Industrial Revolution. The Cyber Revolution. The French, the Russian--

Hey wait! Aren't those salad dressings?

Point is, all these are adjectives. They all describe nouns. They're descriptors. They're all right next to their noun.

"Stand by your noun! wow, wow, wowwow!" You may have heard them referred to as modifiers.

Feh! They're describing, not modifying. They're telling you: What kind? Which one? How many?

Take this note if you haven't taken any others yet:

An adjective will always answer one of these three questions:

Which one?

What kind?

How many?

How many? is self explanatory, so let's focus on Which one? and What kind?

KNOW THIS: When you find a word, and as you get better at it--which you will-- a phrase or a clause--near a noun, and it answers either of those two Qs about that noun -- you've found yourself an adjective!

Conversely, If you find a word describing a kind of thing, or telling which thing, then that thing is an adjective, and the word next to it, the Which? or What? being described will ALWAYS be a noun.

That's why it's easy to ID adjectives, and why . . . they're never adverbs.

Adverbs tell you When? They tell you Where? They tell you How? And they tell you Why?

If they don't, they're not adverbs.

If they do, they are.

It's just that simple.

Really.

The tricky part is that adverbs can tell How? Why? When? or Where? about Verbs, Adjectives, or even other Adverbs.

Not about nouns, though. Adjectives are the only words that describe nouns. Adjectives have cornered the market on talking about nouns.

So, here's your circle of reasoning, your flowchart for adverb ID:

1) Ask yourself: Is this word telling Where? When? How? Why? If so, it's an adverb. 2) If your word is talking about or describing a verb, an adjective, or another adverb, then your word is an adverb.

It's much more common for an adverb to be far afield from its verb, adjective or adverb. It's the leopard frog of descriptors. Adjectives are found near the nouns they describe. Adverbs usually butt up against an adjective or another adverb, but may be quite a way from their verbs.

Remember to ask these four questions about a suspected adverb: Where? When? How: (To what degree? / Under what conditions?) Why?

If your word tells you the answer to one of those four questions, it's an adverb. If not, then it's not.

End of story.

Introducing: Grammar Man!

There's a whole heckuva lot you need to know about grammar, but you're probably so scared it'll bore you silly you just never go there.

Introducing: Grammar Man!

Grammar Man! Flying high over the mountains of speech parts, phrases, and clauses! To infinitives and beyond!

Grammar Man! Disguised as mild-mannered reporter, JHepCat, Grammar Man seeks the betterment of YOUR writing through a burgeoning and ever-increasing ability to analyze diction and syntax. Not to mention the elevation of the poetic over the prosaic. Or the use of active voice throughout, as opposed to the passive constructions so often associated with "legalese."

No, not to mention either of those.

Grammar Man begins his lesson today with the review of the eight parts of speech, aka The Eight Parts of Speech! only seven of which you need to know.

You can forget interjections. Hey! Wow! and Yikes! will never show up on a list of SAT vocabulary words.

Or any other list, other than a list of common interjections.

Sorry, Charlie.

But you do need to know The Big Four and The Little Three.

By The Big Four I mean, of course, noun, verb, adjective, and adverb. These are words you will find on a vocabulary list.

Nouns are things or ideas. People or places. Subjects are always always nouns; so are objects.

Verbs are the heart of any sentence or clause. Find the verb first and unlock the meaning of any sentence or clause. Verbs come in several varieties but the two most important are action and being. To swim, to drink, to read. These are all action verbs. Someone is doing something. To be (or not to be), is our "existence" verb. Any form of "to be" (not "not to be" -- not is never a verb, and never is not a verb. But I get ahead of myself. Where was I? Oh, yeah) Any form of to be, and there are eight: am, are, is, was, were, be, being, been is a being verb. You can't try as much as you like but you can't is. You can be, and you can are, but really, all you're doing is breathing. Bring a mirror for proof. There are helping verbs--pretty important. There are 15 of them, and you need to know them like you know the eight to bes and the 7 parts of speech worth knowing. We'll go over them soon, not today. There are transitive and intransitive verbs. And there are linking verbs, which can be pretty important. To bes and helpings are all also linkings. 'Xcuse me, not all helpings are linkings, but all beings are.

If you know what I mean. If you don't, hang in there. GrammarMan believes in keeping it silly, which a long time ago meant "wise."

Adjectives only modify, or describe nouns. They answer one of three questions: What kind? Which one? How many? Numbers are always adjectives because they tell how many. And remember--if it's not describing a noun, it's not an adjective.

Adverbs on the other hand, can modify verbs, adjectives or other adverbs. This is the main way you can distinguish between an adjective and an adverb: What kind of word is being modified/described?

By extension, the kind of word being modified can also be identified by answering the questions raised by adjectives and adverbs. As just mentioned, adjectives answer one of three questions: What kind? Which one? How many?

Adverbs answer one of four questions: When? Where? To what degree?/Under what conditions?/How? Or Why?

I know what you're thinking: "But GrammarMan, that's six questions!" You can see it that way, but really, throw the slashed questions into the How? bin and you'll probably be ok. I jsut think it's good to know those other phrasings, like knowing three different ways to make a chord when playing guitar.

Like that. At any rate, if your word answers When? Where? To what degree?/Under what conditions?/How? Or Why? it's an adverb. Take it to the bank.

The Little Three are so named not because they are of little importance, but because they are, in fact, little. They're not important vocabularially, either.

But they're crazy way important when you're reading. In fact, if you're trying to read faster, the small words are key. The bigger words your eye will naturally pick up, because they're bigger--the eye can't miss them. But little words telling whose, or where, or which, or whether or not, or although, or because--them's important!

GrammarMan knows the rules, and so breaks them with impunity. You can too. When you know them. Grammar is fun!

And the Little Three are prepositions, pronouns, and conjunctions.

Prepositions are the smallest words. In, on, at, by, for, with, to, these are all prepositions. Prepositions never exist by themselves; they only exist in prepositional phrases. A prepositional phrase begins with a preposition and ends with a noun, known as the object of the preposition. Prepositional phrases always act as adjectives or adverbs. They're phrases, and they always begin with a preposition, but what they mean is: Something's being described--a thing, an action, another describer. But I get ahead of myself. We'll come back to this. Make sure you do, too.

Pronouns save us a lot of time and hassle. For example I could say: "GrammarMan's SAT blog is making GrammarMan's life life better by generating more income for GrammarMan, and establishing GrammarMan as a grammar, reading and writing expert."

But it's a lot simpler to say, GrammarMan is making his life better by generating more income for himself and establishing himself as a grammar expert. Not to mention making a lot of other people grammar experts, too, which is the value of GrammarMan's SAT blog."

Conjunctions come in three varieties: coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, and corelative conjunctions. Coordinating conjunctions are the most important. You can remember them by the acronym FANBOYS: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. You may prefer to remember them in pairs; that is, two pairs and one triad: and but, or nor for, so yet. Coordinating conjunctions like to think they're pretty important, but because they subordinate--make less-- the meaning of what follows, they just don't get that status. You can recognize the subordinate conjunction because if you take it away you have an independent clause -- -- a complete sentence. Subordinating conjunctions include words like while, because, although, and the rest.

Boy that was a lot, huh? But you can't make sense of grammar and you can't be a really great reader without knowing what the parts of speech are and what they do.

So copy and paste this into your grammar handbook: GrammarMan's Guide to Really Good Grammar and Much Better Readin' and Learnin' and thank me later.

What The College Board Doesn't Want You To Know

The SAT is just one big True/False test!

"It's true!"

Look, either you're already pulling at least 700s on every section of the SAT, or you're looking for strategies, tactics, and ABOVE ALL: shortcuts to get you there.

Here are the top three tactics/strategies/skills you'll need to do well on the SAT, particularly the Critical Reading section, not to mention the Math.

(They're not called word problems for nothing.)

1.) Process of Elimination. Get rid of wrong answers first. Narrow down to the only two possible choices. Carefully examine those two for congruent language, et Voila! You've chosen the write answer.

2.) True/False. The process of elimination strategy is entirely dependent on whether an answer is true or false. And since ANY false word eliminates a possible answer, eliminating wrong answers is entirely a True/False proposition.

When every word in the answer choice is true, unassailably true about the passage, or the author's attitude towards the subject, or what a word means in context, well, then: There's your winner!

Your last strategy is the ever-popular, but not so obvious,

3.) Know stuff.

Know the right answers. Not only when you read them, but before. Anticipating correct answers is the fastest way to consistently scoring over 700 on every SAT section.

On Critical Reading that means having a huge vocabulary. No head scratching or puzzling over a word's meaning. Every word you read, you understand. You can follow a pronoun trail back to any antecedent. You understand the logic of words like "although," "despite," "and," and "for."

That's reading comprehension.

In Math, knowing what a function indicates allows you to home in on correct choices faster. If you know an answer must be positive, you focus immediately on positive answer choices, at the same moment eliminating negative choices, which then must be false. You know that the sum of the lengths of any two sides of a triangle must be greater than the length of the third side. And you know that the square of any fraction between 0 and 1 is less than its square root!

In Writing, you know subject and verb must agree both in person and number. You're not distracted by endless strings of prepositional phrases with plural objects. Nor are you fazed by shifting tenses, nonparallel phrasing, or the objective case.

You know stuff. You don't play process of elimination because you don't have to. You hunt for the right answers. 'Cause you can.

'Cause you know stuff. You're just trying to close the gap between 700 and 800.

Everybody else: You're playing process of elimination, at least, you should be.

And that means True? Or False?

That's all process of elimination is True? Or False?

More to come, with examples.

Why A Fat Vocabulary Always Pays Big Dividends

"If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." -- Benjamin Franklin

Mr Hepner's Top Twenty Tips for SAT Success

#2. Know Your SAT's Parameters

The SAT has very definite boundaries. Make it your job to know them before you sit to take a real SAT.

Know how many questions per section. Know how much time you'll have for each section. Know the order of the sections. Know that at least one will be "experimental" and won't count one whit towards your score (or lack thereof), but that you won't know which one it will be, only that it will be a Critical Reading or a Math section.

Section 1: Always an essay, always 25 minutes to complete it.

Sections 2-7: Always include one 35 question Writing Skills section, and either two Critical Reading and three Math sections, or three Critical Reading and two Math sections. Again, one of the "ThreeFers" will be "experimental," you just won't know which, only whether it's Math or Critical Reading.

All sections 2 - 7 are 25 minutes in length.

There's a five minute break after the second section, and another after the fourth section. Then there's a minute break after the sixth section.

All 25-minute Critical Reading sections will have 24 questions, 5, 6 or 8 of which will be Completing the Sentences. The remainder will be passage based reading analysis.

25-minute Math sections will have either 20 questions, or 18; on the 18-question sections, four will be grid-in. Wrong answers on grid-ins will not be deducted from your score.

The 35 question Writing section will feature 11 "Improving Sentences" questions, 18 "Identifying Sentence Errors" questions, and 6 "Improving Paragraphs" questions.

Sections 8 & 9 are 20 minutes each, one Math, and one Critical Reading. The Math will have 14 questions; the Critical Reading will have 19 questions, 5, 6 or 8 of which will be Completing the Sentence questions, the rest of which will be passage-based reading analysis.

There's a one minute stand at your desk "stretch break" between Sections 8 & 9.

Lastly, Section 10 tests your Writing skills with 14 "Improving Sentences" questions.

Knowing what to expect in terms of timing and composition of the SAT puts you in the driver's seat for feeling comfortable while taking this arduous test.

Knowledge is power, whether it's a bigger vocabulary, or simply knowing just how many questions, just how much time you'll have to answer them, or what order you're likely to find them, and where the "time-outs" are.

Preparation SAT: The Anti-Stress.

Mr Hepner's Top 20 Tips for SAT Success

#1. Read the Instructions

Re-read them.

Know them.

SAT is a timed test. Waste not one second reading instructions under actual testing conditions. Know 'em all going in.

Spend your time answering the questions, not reading the instructions.