Name:______
Date:______Per. ______
WWHW - ADJECTIVES
Adjectives are words that modify nouns or pronouns. To modify simply means to describe or add detail in some way. Some adjectives help add sparkle to the language by helping to create pictures in the reader’s mind.
The rat devoured the cheese.
Yawn. Pretty dull. You probably get a fuzzy mental picture. However, add a few adjectives, and suddenly the blurry mental picture sharpens:
The rat, gigantic, crazy-eyed and straggly, bared its sharp, pointed fangs and devoured the cheese.
Now that’s better!
Adjectives answer four questions about nouns or pronouns:
What kind?
Hungry, hairy trolls lie quietly under toll bridges waiting for tasty roly-poly elves and gnomes.
How many?
Samantha practiced the Heimlich maneuver on her little brother and dislodged three army men, two bottle caps, and one secret decoder ring. (Heimlich, little, army, bottle, and secret are also adjectives, but they answer the question what kind?)
Which one?
Waiter, there’s a sea monkey in this soup.
How much?
Though much time has passed, Delbert has lost little weight on his parsley and donut diet. (Parsley and donut are also adjectives, but they answer the question what kind?)
Beware! Sometimes English is just plain confusing because some words lead double lives. A word, for example, might be a noun in one case and an adjective in another.
Not-so-smart little Ripley traded his bicycle for a pickle. Pickle is a noun.
To impress his friends, he put a pig’s kidney in his empty pickle jar. Pickle is an adjective and tell what kind of jar.
NOUN AND ADJECTIVE PRACTICE
Using two colors of pencils or crayons, color the nouns in this text below one color. Color the adjectives that describe the nouns the second color.
Last week I visited a deep, dark cave with my class. First we went through the large entrance into all of the small passages. We saw many interesting animals that live in the busy ecosystem, like some brown cockroaches and some slimy glow worms. Then we stopped to watch the black bats fly around. They were eating tiny insects! Next we watched small drops of water form limestone stalactites and stalagmites. The stones were long and some of them were sharp and we didn’t touch them but they looked cold and rough. Later we saw many amazing food chains right in front of our eyes. Before leaving we took time to listen to all the soft sounds of the living things in the cave. Finally, we left the huge place through a thin crack in the bumpy cave wall. It was an exciting and interesting adventure!
grammar giggles #5