You have learnt that adverbs tell us more about verbs, and that to form an adverb that tells the reader how something happened, you usually add –ly to the adjectival form, for example: breathless (adjective) – breathlessly (adverb).
However, you do NOT add –ly when you describe the following verbs:
is, are, am, look, taste, smell, seem, feel
Examples:
Besides adverbs of manner, place and time, there are also other kinds of adverbs:
Adverbs of degree tell us about how much or how little something happened/is happening/will happen.
For example: The athlete ran quickly. How quickly did she run? She ran incredibly quickly. In this sentence, “ran” is the verb, “quickly” is an adverb of manner, and “incredibly” is an adverb of degree. The adverb of degree in this sentence tells you more about the adverb of manner, “quickly”.
Adverbs of degree also can tell us more about adjectives. For example: The extremely fat athlete ran slowly. (How fat was the athlete? Extremely fat.)
Adverbs of frequency tell us how often something happened/is happening/will happen.
For example: We sometimes watch movies. (How often do you watch? Sometimes.)
We usually place an adverb of frequency between the subject and the verb, as in the sentence “We sometimes watch movies”. (“We” is the subject and “watch” is the verb.) However, we can also place an adverb of frequency at the beginning or end of a sentence, for example: Often we read until late at night. OR: We read until late at night often.
Below are more examples of adverbs of frequency. The adverbs in this list may only appear at the beginning or the end of the sentence – never between the subject and the verb.