Adverbs of Frequency Learn English Vocabulary

want to speak real english from your

first lesson

sign up for your free lifetime account

at englishclass101.com

hi everybody my name is alicia in this

lesson i’m going to talk about

adverbs of frequency let’s get started

okay

first what is an adverb of frequency

an adverb of frequency is a word or i’ve

also included a few

phrases in this lesson it’s a word

that answers the question how often

how often so how often do we

do something how often do i do something

so these words these adverbs of

frequency give us the answer to that

question

we can place adverbs of frequency in

different places

in sentences we can place the adverb of

frequency

before the verb that’s okay

if the verb you’re using however is the

verb

be however you need to place the adverb

after that so for example in a sentence

like

he is excited if i want to place an

adverb of frequency in that where the

sentence uses the verb be

in is i would put it after is like he is

always

excited so that’s a key point to

remember when you’re using the verb

be in today’s lesson though i’m going to

focus a lot on this next point

some adverbs are commonly placed at the

beginning

or at the end of a sentence

so i want to focus today on this point

and on placing the adverb of frequency

directly

before the verb you want to modify

so i have a few example sentences here

first this one i sometimes eat

salad for lunch i sometimes eat salad

for lunch

this positioning this word sometimes

this is my

adverb of frequency i’ve placed it

before the verb

eat so in this way i’m using this

pattern here the adverb of frequency

is before the verb i’m modifying i

sometimes eat salad for lunch

in these examples here however i’ve

changed the placement of the adverb

here it’s at the beginning of the

sentence sometimes

i eat salad for lunch sometimes i eat

salad for lunch

and here i eat salad for lunch sometimes

you might hear that as well so a pattern

like this

where the adverb comes at the end of the

sentence you might hear more in

everyday speech like we want to add a

little extra information right at the

end or we just think of something

so we add it at the end you might hear

that

it’s less common i feel to use something

like this

in written english but you might hear it

in spoken english too

also please keep in mind that when

you’re using these

adverbs like at the beginning or at the

end of a sentence

they can change the meaning or they can

modify the meaning of the whole sentence

so this is kind of unique to adverbs

what are called sentence

modifying adverbs i’m not going to talk

a lot about that in this lesson

but please keep in mind that sometimes

changing the position

of your adverb changes the way that

adverb affects the sentence

for today’s lesson we’re going to keep

it very simple though and just look at

the differences in these words

so now that we know we can use these

adverbs in different positions

i want to talk about the variety of

adverbs

so for this lesson i prepared a scale

from 0 to 100 and this scale

shows us frequency frequency how often

we do something so i’ve also marked

on this scale some words or some phrases

rather

uh that we use at the beginning or at

the end of sentences i’ve marked those

with this red star and i’ve included a

couple of extra phrases here

that we use similarly to these adverbs

of frequency but they’re actually like

a group of words so let’s take a look

the first word let’s start at this part

of the scale

the first word here is never never so

never is at the

zero point this is for something that

you never

do you do it zero times for example

in this sentence i never eat salad for

lunch i

never eat salad for lunch that means

it’s something that

just does not happen in your life so we

use

never for something that does not happen

zero

next on the scale are these three words

so the first one this is tough for many

people to pronounce

rarely rarely i rarely

eat salad for lunch or in my other

example

he is rarely excited if i want to use

the verb

be in an example like this rarely

is close to zero but is not zero so

it’s getting there it’s a little bit

close to zero

so this is something that we use for an

activity or a situation

that is not like common it’s not

something that we do

often we do that rarely

these words mean the same thing seldom

seldom seldom and rarely have the same

meaning

hardly ever hardly ever please be

careful this is not hardly never hardly

never is incorrect hardly

ever i hardly ever eat salad

for lunch or he is hardly ever excited

all of these words mean very nearly

never but not quite never so maybe this

is like

eight or ten on our scale here so rarely

seldom hardly ever in terms of

differences

seldom is probably the least commonly

used from these three words

i feel hardly ever is fairly common

rarely sounds a little bit more formal

to me though

but none of these are incorrect or

strange it’s just seldom is probably the

least

commonly used if i were to recommend i

would suggest using hardly ever in

everyday speech

and perhaps rarely if you want to sound

a little bit more formal

okay so let’s move on to the next part

the next part this is one of the

sentence modifying

uh in this case phrases i mentioned this

phrase is

every once in a while every once in a

while

at native speak or rather at native

speed we would say

every once in a while every once in a

while so

this is a phrase that we usually

position at the beginning of a sentence

we do not use this phrase please note we

do not use this phrase

in this position i every once in a while

eat salad for lunch we do not use it in

that way

please use this phrase at the beginning

of a sentence

every once in a while i eat salad for

lunch you might hear it

at the end of a sentence i eat salad for

lunch every once in a while

you might hear it there too but please

don’t use this

directly before the verb okay uh

so every once in a while shows us it’s

kind of

not regular so every once in a while it

sounds like when i have the feeling to

do

something or there’s not really a

schedule for it just

one time in a while it’s like in a in a

kind of vague period we don’t know

exactly a period

but when the speaker feels like it yeah

i eat salad for lunch every once in a

while

that’s the kind of feeling it’s not

really a regular thing

so i’ve put it a little bit lower than

sometimes on this scale

okay so let’s continue to sometimes so

sometimes was in my example

here all of my example sentences and

sometimes i’ve marked with this red star

sometimes can be used at the beginning

or at the end of a sentence

and it’s pretty much on the 50 like the

50 mark here on the scale

so it’s like the halfway point it’s not

never and it’s not

at 100 it’s very like halfway here

so we want to describe something that

happens

with some regularity there’s perhaps

some schedule to it or something that we

do

a little bit more often but it’s not so

common for us

that is sometimes sometimes i’ve also

put below this

uh another phrase and this is another

one that we use

in this position at the beginning of a

sentence or the end of his sentence

the phrase is every so often every so

often so yes often is in this

here and i’ll talk about often in just a

moment

but this does not mean often this phrase

means

sometimes sometimes or perhaps even a

little bit less

so just like every once in a while we

use this for something that doesn’t

really have like a set schedule

it has the feeling of sometimes there’s

not really

a common like it’s not really a common

activity

so we would use it here so every so

often i eat a salad for lunch

or i eat a salad for lunch every so

often that’s the feel

of this expression so these two phrases

please remember we use them at the

beginning

and at the end of sentences okay

with that in mind let’s continue to

this part of the scale the next word

here is

occasionally occasionally so this word

sounds a little bit more formal

it has a similar regularity it’s about

the same as

sometimes but this word sounds a little

bit more

formal if i want to sound more formal

instead of choosing

sometimes i might choose occasionally

occasionally

this is another one that can be

positioned at the beginning

or at the end of a sentence occasionally

i

eat salad for lunch i eat salad for

lunch occasionally

and again if i want to use it in a to b

verb sentence as in

he is excited i would say he is

occasionally

excited so occasionally sounds a little

bit more

formal than sometimes occasionally

okay let’s move on then too often often

so here on the scale

we’re at maybe 75 or so so this is for

something that happens

often we do it with some regularity so

maybe it’s every month

for example or every week something you

do often

so this is maybe something that’s normal

for you to do

often so this one is very common in

everyday speech

and when we pronounce this at least in

american english

we don’t pronounce this t we don’t say

often often

we usually pronounce it as often often

so please keep that in mind when you use

this i often eat salad for lunch

often i eat salad for lunch or i eat

salad for lunch

often with this one i would suggest

using this

in this position the ones on this scale

the words on this scale

i have not marked with a red star

i suggest you use these in this position

directly before the verb you want to

modify

these words that do not have a red star

they sound

most natural in this position you might

hear

yes you might hear people in speech

using them

in these positions but it’s going to

sound a little bit more natural well

actually a lot more natural

to use it here i often eat salad for

lunch sounds much more natural here

okay onward then two usually

usually i said usually just now you

might hear some people say

usually as well uh but in most cases we

say

usually usually and interestingly

this word has become kind of um or

rather this word has

given birth to a new expression which is

yuge or the yuge which is short for

the usual something and actually the

dictionary as of the time of making this

video is having trouble trying to find

the best way to spell that word

the huge so the uge is

referring to something that a customer

always

gets when they come to the store so if

i’m staff at a restaurant or a coffee

shop

and i know this customer is a regular

customer

they come every day or every week i know

the customer’s

usual order what they usually get

i can say would you like the usual and

the customer might say yes i’d like

the huge the huge it’s like a cool kind

of rough way of saying

my usual order please that comes from

the word usually usually so

usually it’s higher up on the scale

and because i’ve marked this with this

red star here we use it

usually at the beginning or at the end

of a sentence

i would say in most cases we tend to use

it

more at this position at the beginning

of a sentence

usually i eat salad for lunch it sounds

quite nice

you can use it here too i usually eat

salad for lunch

sounds nice so usually it’s a very

regular activity

that’s why we use this word to talk

about a regular customer and their

regular order

with the yuge in that case it’s a noun

so

usually usually uh next word here is

frequently frequently shares a meaning

with usually but frequently sounds

more formal and we don’t use it so much

in everyday

speech you might hear this in a business

meeting perhaps

or in more academic situations

so something that needs a higher level

of formality

so frequently it sounds a little too

formal for this topic

actually frequently i eat salad for

lunch or i eat salad for lunch

frequently it sounds a little bit too

formal

so we would use this in more formal

context more formal situations

okay finally the final word here is

always

always so we use always we tend to use

always

in this position so i would not

recommend using always

here or here so always i eat salad for

lunch

doesn’t sound so natural nor does i eat

salad for lunch always

please use this one in this position i

always eat salad for lunch

and in my to be verb example he is

always

excited so always always please use that

in this position sounds great okay i

want to finish this lesson then by

looking at one more group

which i have down here i’ve marked this

with this red star again

and a red asterisk rather these are

kind of different from the ones i’ve

introduced here

these are what i’ve called time

period-based adverbs

these words are hourly which means every

hour

daily every day weekly

every week and monthly every month

yearly and annually so every year

yearly and annually mean the same thing

annually is a little bit more formal

we use these typically at the end

of a sentence so we don’t usually put

these at the beginning

or before the verb we’re modifying

these very commonly come at the end of a

sentence

so some examples of how we use these

would be

i check my phone hourly

i check my phone hourly so hourly

means every hour every hour every hour

i check my phone is another way to say

that it’s very common to put this

at the end of the sentence this is

showing us

this whole activity happens every hour

it’s modifying the whole sentence

another example

is i check my budget weekly i check my

budget weekly

so again weekly means every week

every week and so every week i check my

budget

but we put this at the end of the

sentence typically

i check my budget weekly so these hourly

daily weekly these show us a time period

or like they they give us that how often

answer but with time

too uh please note like smaller than our

there’s nothing smaller we don’t use

minutely you might hear

by the minute for some things but we

don’t use

minutely or secondly we don’t use those

so please begin with hourly daily weekly

okay so this is an introduction

to a lot of different adverbs that you

can use

to describe frequency so i hope that

this was helpful for you and please try

to

use these to make some example sentences

in the comment section of this video

of course if you have any comments or

questions or anything like that

please feel free to let us know about

those in the comment section as well

i hope that you enjoyed this lesson if

you did please make sure to give it a

thumbs up

subscribe to our channel if you haven’t

already and check us out at

englishclass101.com

for some other things that can help you

with your english studies thanks very

much for watching this lesson and i will

see you again

soon bye-bye want to speed up your

language learning

take your very first lesson with us

you’ll start speaking in minutes

and master real conversations sign up

for your free lifetime account

just click the link in the description