English conversation group and… adjectives!

Our weekly English conversation group has the aim of practising conversation… obviously, but we also do grammar points, share information about British culture, history, geography etc, have games, do reading… all sorts of things.

Today we were looking at adjectives and trying to explain and practice the way in which they are used and the usual order in which they come; it is so easy to do as a native speaker! You don’t even think about whether he it is a big red bus or whether it is a red big bus, let alone how to order a string of adjectives! We taught it and gave out examples and practiced, and that is the key, practice, practice, practice.

I came across two lists to help decide which order is correct – which I guess is more helpful if someone is writing:

• number (five, several)
• opinion (lovely, useless)
• size (big, tiny)
• age (mature, ancient)
• shape (square, round)
• colour (red, sky-blue)
• origin (French, English)
• material (wood, cotton)
• purpose (writing, cooking)

There was also a chart I came across which was titled ‘The Royal Order of Adjectives’; this started with a determiner (a, an, four, her etc.) then an observation (e.g. beautiful) then the four aspects of physical description – size, shape, age, colour, and lastly origin, material, quality… and last of all the noun it describes!

The site also included a helpful video:

http://youtube=http://youtu.be/hV9z-fKA6wI

http://4thgradeela.weebly.com/

My featured picture is of one, beautiful, big, fifteen year old, rounded, blue and red, Peruvian, earthenware, decorative pot!