7 Worksheet on Vocabulary: Adjectives and Adverbs Text: Abraham Cahan, The Meeting, from: Peter Freese, New York, Viewfinder Topics (München: Langenscheidt, 2011), pp. 13ff.
The exercises can be done before reading or after having read the text.
A WHY WORK ON MY ADJECTIVES/ ADVERBS? Adjectives are a part of speech that expresses an attribute of a place, thing or a person: they describe, qualify or modify nouns. Adverbs describe verbs (actions) or adjectives. To make an adverb, add ‐ly to the adjective (mind the spelling with adjectives ending with consonant + y).
Adjectives exist for a reason. Adjectives add color to words of a text. They make it easier to understand what is going on when you can’t see what is going on. (See also: “Reference Library” (on the CD that accompanies the Resource Book): A.2.2.2 Improving your grammar (A Life‐Raft of English Structure) Æ c) Adverbs .)
B TASKS 1 GETTING STARTED 1 ‐ MAKE AN ACROSTIC Write down adjectives to describe Jake and Gitl (from the text “The Meeting”) like in this example with “Dani” (make sure you don’t use “simple” adjectives like nice or good etc.). If you haven’t read the text, make up some adjectives for the characters. Decisive Ambitious Nervous Incredible
Alternative: write it in the superlative form (here: Sam) – maybe you have to repeat the rules before you start! Smartest most Attractive Maddest
2 GETTING STARTED 2 ‐ ADD ADJECTIVES TO A SIMPLE TEXT 1) Read the following text: It was a day in October. The weather had changed over night and a wind had brought rain with it. Miss Sue drove down the road in her car, the morning sun streaming through the window, the air against her skin, the trees, and the grass.
2) Rewrite it with at least 5 adjectives.
3) How does the text change when you add adjectives?
3 IMPROVE THE TEXT
1) Take a look at this adapted version of the beginning of “The Meeting”. A few weeks later, on a Saturday morning, Jake, with a telegram in his hand, stood in front of one of the desks at the Immigration Bureau of Ellis Island. He was in his best clothes and ball shoes, and, in spite of the expression of shamefacedness and anxiety which distorted his features, he looked younger than usual. All the way to the island he had been in a flurry of anticipation. The prospect of meeting his wife and child, and, incidentally, of showing off his attire to her, had thrown him into a fever of impatience. But on entering the shed he had caught a glimpse of Gitl and Yosselé through the railing separating the immigrants from their visitors, and his heart had sunk at the sight of his wife's appearance. She was dressed in a jacket and skirt, and her hair was concealed under a wig. This she had put on just before leaving the steamer, both "in honor of the
New York Sabbath" and by way of sprucing herself up for the event. Since Yekl had left home she had gained in the measurement of her waist. The wig, however, made her seem stouter and shorter than she would have appeared without it. It also added at least five years to her looks. But she was aware neither of this nor of the fact that in New York even a Jewess of her station and orthodox breeding is accustomed to blink at the wickedness of displaying her hair, and that none but an elderly matron may wear a wig without being the occasional target for snowballs or stones. She was dark of complexion, and the nine or ten days spent at sea had covered her face with a bronze, which combined with her cheek bones, eyes, and, above all, the wig, to lend her resemblance to a squaw.
2) Rewrite it using as many of the given adjectives and adverbs as possible. (Do so by hand or by computer.) big great slovenly brown grotesque smartly dressed clipped joyous smooth black considerably natural swell dear naturally un‐American deep inky little uncouth detained pitch‐black unfolded distant prominent voluminous freshly shaven sickly
3) Make different versions. 4) Compare it to Cahan’s version in your book (p. 13). 5) Translate the adjectives and adverbs ‐ in their context ‐ into German. (Make a list and learn the ones that are new to you.)
