Grammatical Relationships: Adjectives, Adverbs, and Nouns

Before we can troubleshoot a broken sentence on the Praxis Core exam, we must understand how the parts function in isolation. The English language divides its primary modifiers into two strictly guarded camps: adjectives and adverbs.

The Adjective

An adjective is a grammatical part of speech that modifies a noun. Because pronouns act as stand-ins for nouns, an adjective is also a grammatical part of speech that modifies a pronoun.

Adjectives exist to restrict or clarify the universe of possibilities surrounding a noun. If you tell your students to "take out a pencil," you might get a chaotic assortment of colored pencils, dull golf pencils, and mechanical pens. Adjectives answer specific questions about nouns, such as "Which one?", "What kind?", or "How many?" When you say, "Take out two sharp, graphite pencils," you have used adjectives to calibrate the instruction perfectly.

The Adverb

While adjectives paint the nouns, adverbs calibrate everything else. An adverb is a grammatical part of speech that modifies a verb. It tells us the manner in which an action happens.

But adverbs are also the multi-tools of the grammar world. An adverb is a grammatical part of speech that modifies an adjective, and an adverb is a grammatical part of speech that modifies another adverb.

Just as adjectives answer specific questions about nouns, adverbs answer specific questions about the words they modify, such as "How?", "When?", "Where?", or "To what extent?"

The Rule of '-ly' Many adverbs are formed by adding the suffix '-ly' to an adjective.

• Adjective: She gave a quick glance. (What kind of glance?)
• Adverb: She ran quickly. (How did she run?)

However, language is rarely perfectly uniform. The word 'hard' can function correctly as both an adjective and an adverb without changing its spelling. (e.g., "It was a hard test" vs. "She studied hard"). Similarly, the word 'fast' can function correctly as both an adjective and an adverb without changing its spelling. There is no such word as "fastly."

To understand how Praxis Core examiners test your knowledge of adjectives and adverbs, you must first understand the verbs that drive them. The single most common point of failure in modifier usage stems from misunderstanding the difference between action verbs and linking verbs.

Action verbs describe specific activities performed by the subject of a sentence. Running, jumping, writing, speaking—these are actions. Because they are activities, action verbs must be modified by adverbs. You need an adverb to explain how the action is happening.

Linking verbs connect the subject of a sentence to a subject complement. They do not express action. Instead, they act as an "equals sign" (=) between the subject and the rest of the sentence. Common linking verbs include to be (is, am, are, was, were), become, seem, and sensory verbs like feel, look, smell, and taste. Because linking verbs simply point backward to the subject (which is a noun or pronoun), linking verbs must be modified by adjectives.

When an adjective is used in this way, we call it a predicate adjective. A predicate adjective is an adjective positioned after a linking verb, and its sole purpose is that a predicate adjective modifies the subject of the sentence.

The Two Great Modifier Fallacies

Examiners love to test the boundaries of action and linking verbs. They do this by planting two specific structural errors:

1. A common grammatical error involves using an adjective to modify an action verb.
   • Incorrect: The student read the passage careful. (Here, the adjective 'careful' is incorrectly trying to modify the action verb 'read'.)
   • Correct: The student read the passage carefully.
2. A common grammatical error involves using an adverb following a linking verb to describe the subject.
   • Incorrect: The flowers smell sweetly. (Flowers do not have noses; they cannot perform the action of smelling. 'Smell' is a linking verb here. Using the adverb 'sweetly' implies the flowers are actively sniffing something in a sweet manner.)
   • Correct: The flowers smell sweet. ('Sweet' is a predicate adjective modifying the noun 'flowers'.)

Certain words are heavily tested because they are frequently abused in spoken English. As a teacher, you will hear these errors in the hallways every day. You must learn to spot them in writing.

Good vs. Well

• The word 'good' functions exclusively as an adjective. It can never modify an action verb. You cannot say, "The choir sang good."
• The word 'well' functions as an adverb when describing the manner in which an action is performed. ("The choir sang well.")
• The exception: The word 'well' functions as an adjective only when referring to a person's health. If a student returns from the nurse's office, it is grammatically correct to say, "She is not feeling well," because 'well' is acting as a predicate adjective describing the student's physical state.

Bad vs. Badly

• The word 'bad' functions exclusively as an adjective.
• The word 'badly' functions exclusively as an adverb.

This distinction becomes critically important with sensory linking verbs. If a student fails a test, they might say, "I feel badly about my grade." This is grammatically incorrect. 'Feel' in this context is a linking verb connecting the subject ('I') to a state of being. Remember the rule: The adjective 'bad' should be used after sensory linking verbs such as 'feel' or 'look'. Saying "I feel badly" literally means "My physical sense of touch is malfunctioning." The correct sentence is: "I feel bad about my grade."

Real vs. Really

• The word 'real' is an adjective meaning genuine or true. (e.g., "This is real gold.")
• The word 'really' is an adverb meaning very or truly.

A frequent conversational error is using 'real' to emphasize another adjective, as in, "That was a real hard math problem." Because 'hard' is an adjective, it must be modified by an adverb. Therefore, the adverb 'really' must be used instead of the adjective 'real' to intensify another adjective. The correct formulation is: "That was a really hard math problem."

Sure vs. Surely

• The word 'sure' functions as an adjective. (e.g., "I am sure of the answer.")
• The word 'surely' functions as an adverb. (e.g., "You surely do not expect me to grade all these essays tonight.")

When educators look at data, they compare outcomes. Grammar gives us specific mathematical rules for making these comparisons using adjectives and adverbs.

There are three degrees of comparison: positive (the baseline word, like tall), comparative, and superlative.

1. The comparative degree of an adjective or adverb is used to compare exactly two items.
2. The superlative degree of an adjective or adverb is used to compare three or more items.

If you are grading essays from two students, one essay is the better of the two. If you are grading essays from thirty students, one is the best of the thirty. You never say someone is the "tallest of the two boys."

Constructing the Degrees

The mechanics of building these comparative words depends entirely on syllables.

• The suffix '-er' forms the comparative degree for adjectives with one or two syllables. (e.g., smart becomes smarter).
• The suffix '-est' forms the superlative degree for adjectives with one or two syllables. (e.g., smart becomes smartest).
• The word 'more' precedes an adjective or adverb of three or more syllables to form the comparative degree. (e.g., intelligent becomes more intelligent).
• The word 'most' precedes an adjective or adverb of three or more syllables to form the superlative degree. (e.g., intelligent becomes most intelligent).

The Danger of Redundancy

Because spoken English is often informal, students sometimes stack these modifiers for emphasis, creating redundancies that are strictly forbidden on the Praxis exam.

• A double comparative error occurs when an adjective or adverb is modified simultaneously by the suffix '-er' and the word 'more'. You cannot say a student is "more smarter." They are either "smarter" or "more intelligent."
• A double superlative error occurs when an adjective or adverb is modified simultaneously by the suffix '-est' and the word 'most'. You cannot call a lesson the "most clearest." It is simply the "clearest."

Let us turn our attention back to the gears of the sentence: the nouns. In an algebraic equation, both sides of the equals sign must balance. In grammar, this principle is called noun-noun agreement.

Noun-noun agreement is a grammatical rule dictating that nouns representing the same entity within a sentence must match in number.

This relies heavily on linking verbs (our grammatical equals signs). Remember that a linking verb connects a subject to a subject complement. When that subject complement is a noun, it is called a predicate noun. A predicate noun must agree in logical number with the subject of the sentence.

The logic is beautifully strict:

• Singular subjects require singular predicate nouns.
• Plural subjects require plural predicate nouns.

Imagine a high school counselor speaking to a pair of ambitious students.

• The sentence 'The two boys want to be an astronaut' contains a noun-noun agreement error.

Why? Because mathematically, two boys cannot fuse their bodies together to become one single astronaut. The plural subject ("two boys") must equate to a plural predicate noun.

• The sentence 'The two boys want to be astronauts' demonstrates correct noun-noun agreement.

Similarly, look at how we classify groups of things:

• The sentence 'Dogs make a good pet' contains a noun-noun agreement error. "Dogs" is plural, but "a good pet" is singular.
• The sentence 'Dogs make good pets' demonstrates correct noun-noun agreement.

The Immutability of Adjectives

When you correct a noun-noun agreement error by making a singular noun plural, what happens to the adjectives attached to it? Nothing.

When a singular noun is changed to a plural noun to fix an agreement error, any modifying adjectives describing that noun do not change form. This is because English adjectives do not have plural forms.

In languages like Spanish or French, adjectives change to match the plurality of the nouns they describe (e.g., el gato negro vs. los gatos negros). English has no such mechanism. One dog is a "good pet"; multiple dogs are "good pets." We do not say "goods pets."

We conclude with a unique adverb that causes outsized trouble on standardized writing exams: hardly.

The adverb 'hardly' carries a negative meaning equivalent to 'barely' or 'scarcely'.

Because its negative nature is implied rather than explicit (like the word not or never), writers often accidentally pair it with another negative word.

Warning: The Double Negative Using the adverb 'hardly' alongside another negative word creates an incorrect double negative construction.

If a teacher says, "I can't hardly hear the students in the back row," they have essentially multiplied two negatives. Mathematically and grammatically, "cannot" + "hardly" cancels out the negation, literally meaning the teacher can hear the students with great ease.

To correct this error for the Praxis Core, strip away the redundant negative: "I can hardly hear the students in the back row."

By mastering these rules—distinguishing between the nouns that act as your gears, the verbs that provide the tension, and the adjectives and adverbs that calibrate the reality of the sentence—you do more than pass a licensure exam. You arm yourself with the precise, deliberate command of language required to teach it to the next generation.