Addy, the Wandering Adjective

Hello. I'm your Adjective Repair serviceman. Please call me "Addy". I am a pretty, smart adjective. Please don't call me a smart, pretty adjective. Growing up an adjective was not easy. Sometimes, I just didn't know where I belonged, especially among other adjectives. Moreover, people learning English all seemed to have their opinions about where I belonged.

But I learned to deal with this. I worked hard to maintain order in the neighborhood. I provided descriptive views of my neighbors, the nouns, and even other adjectives to those visiting our close-knit, friendly, little part of Grammarville. I delighted in offering visitors my opinions as well as facts about our residents like age, size, shape and the color of their hair. Sometimes, tourists would want to know the origins of our nouns or the materials they were made of. Although rarely, I did get questions about the nouns purpose in life, too. As you might guess, it was quite a difficult, long workday for me.

Speaking of which, enough silly, small talk about me. Let's get to work. How can I help you?

Exercise: In your own words, describe the work of an adjective like Addy.

Out of Order

Brainstorm>>> Getting it Right
The students made a few mistakes with adjective order. Look over the following and try correcting their mistakes.

1. Should I say, "Old my pretty, French girlfriend?
2. How about, "My old, pretty, French girlfriend?
3. We were just saying that you are an intelligent, beautiful, nice woman.
4. Oh, you're a talkative, handsome, smart man.
5. He's just nervous because he's around two, grown, young, beautiful, intelligent, women.

What is DOSASCOMP and how can it help us learn about the order of adjectives?

Well, it helps to know what the letters mean. The letter "D" stands for Determiners. These always appear before adjectives. They are words like A, an, the, those, many and some.

The letter "O" stands for Opinion. The "S" represents Size. The "A" represents adjectives that indicate Age.

Let's look at the DOSASCOMP chart below to get an understanding of how adjectives are prioritized.

Notice that Determiners precede all adjectives. For example, we never say, "Beautiful my flower garden." Rather, we say, "My beautiful flower garden."

The first class of adjectives are those that represent opinions. So, we can say, "He's pretty big for his age." because opinion has priority over size.

Getting familiar with the DOSASCOMP chart will help you place adjectives in the proper order. Then, those confusing, little, English adjectives will be far less problematic.

Now, let's practice using the knowledge you have gained about the order of adjectives.
For each of the five sets of words, drag and drop the words in the correct order into the boxes below.

• D: both, either, many, your, several, our
• O: good, bad, beautiful, lovely, amazing, comfortable, nice, expensive
• S: tiny, enormous, little, tall, long
• A: old, ancient, five-year-old, antique
• S: flat,square, rectangular, triangular, heart-shaped, fat, thin
• C: pale, bright, shining, black, faded, reddish, gold
• O: Swedish, French, Mexican, Canadian, British
• M: silk, metal, paper, gold, cotton, ceramic, velvet, synthetic, plastic
• P: writing, rolling, dancing, sleeping, gardening

Getting Creative

Pairs: Using the visual cues below, work with a partner to create descriptive sentences. Be sure to observe proper adjective order.