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 uh 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 how however uh 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 uh some adverbs are common ly 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 modify 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 uh 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 uh 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 0o 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 uh in an example like this uh 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 10 on our scale here so rarely seldom hardly ever in terms of different differences seldom is probably the least commonly used from these three words I feel hardly ever is fairly common uh rarely sounds a little bit more formal to me though uh 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 mention 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 uh 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 the period but when the speaker feels like it 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 my example sentences uh 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 uh 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 um 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 uh 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 uh regularity it's about the same as sometimes uh but this word sounds a little bit more formal if I want to sound more formal instead of choosing sometimes I

might choose occasion Al 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 uh and again if I want to use it in a to be verb sentence as in he is excited I would say he is occasionally excited so occasionally sounds a little bit more formal uh than sometimes occasionally okay let's move on then to 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 uh 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 uh 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 to usually usually uh I said usually just now you might hear some people say usually as well uh 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 yug or the yug which is short for the usual something uh 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 uh the yug

uh so the yug 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 customers usual order what they usually get I can say would you like the usual and the customer might say yes I'd like the usuge the usuge it's like a cool kind of rough way of saying my usual order please that comes from the word you usually usually so usually

it's higher up on this 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 Reg regular activity that's why we use this word uh to talk about a regular customer and their regular order

with the usuge and 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 uh 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 uh formal uh 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 uh which I have down here I've marked this with this red star again and red asterisk rather um 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 uh 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 hour there's nothing smaller we don't use minutely you might hear by the minute for some things uh 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