Adverbs of Frequency Learn English Vocabulary
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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
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