Order of Adjectives

Syllabus tag: Kenya CBC | Grade 9 English | Theme 5.0 Relationships: Community | Strand 5.3 Grammar | Sub-Strand 5.3.1 Order of Adjectives (2 Lessons)

Lesson objectives

By the end of this sub-strand, you should be able to:

• State the conventional order of adjectives before a noun.
• Arrange two or more adjectives correctly in a sentence.
• Punctuate strings of adjectives appropriately.
• Appreciate that adjective order is a convention native speakers follow without noticing.

Summary

When two or more adjectives come before a noun, English places them in a fixed order. Nobody is taught this order as a child, yet every native speaker follows it, and a sentence that breaks it sounds wrong even to someone who cannot say why. The conventional sequence is opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material and purpose. A small number of learners' errors in description trace entirely to this ordering, and the sequence can be memorised in one sitting.