Adjective or Adverb? - Advanced

This advanced adjective or adverb exercise focuses on choices where form and meaning can pull in different directions. You will meet dual-form adverbs such as hard/hardly, late/lately, high/highly, free/freely, wide/widely, and close/closely. These pairs are not simple style choices: hard means with effort, while hardly means almost not; late is about time, while lately means recently.

The B2 questions also test -ly words that are adjectives, such as friendly, lonely, and lovely, plus adverbs that modify adjectives, as in genuinely interested and increasingly complex. Linking verbs still need adjectives when they describe a state, so she looked sad differs from an action such as looked angrily at someone. Meaning comes before spelling. For each blank, identify the function first: physical position, degree, recent time, cost, restriction, state, or manner. That meaning will usually point to only one natural form. The best clue is often the phrase immediately after the blank.