Adverbsof
Frequency
Place the adverb
I usually get coffee before work.
always
before the verb
He almost always gets tea.
almost always
after the be verb.
Simon is almost always late for work.
Peter is almost never tired.
usually
sometimes
Sometimes is a Sometimes I go out for dinner.
lot ofdsfdsfsdfds
fun. It has I sometimes eat dinner at home.
almost never
four different
I am sometimes hungry in the afternoon.
positions. My wife cooks breakfast sometimes. never
Rewrite the following sentences using adverbs of frequency.
EX: Marge and Steve commute to work. Marge and Steve almost always commute to work.
1. I cook dinner at home. __________________________________________________________
2. My friends and I go out for drinks. _________________________________________________
3. Marge is tired in the morning. _____________________________________________________
4. We go to the beach on Sundays. __________________________________________________
5. My best friend drinks red wine. ____________________________________________________
6. I smoke. _____________________________________________________________________
How often do you . . . . How often are you . . .
. . . wash your car? ________________________________________________________________
. . . in a rush? ____________________________________________________________________
. . . go out on a date? ______________________________________________________________
. . . have breakfast? _______________________________________________________________
. . . steal things from local stores? ____________________________________________________
. . . late for work? __________________________________________________________________
. . . listen to your favorite music? ______________________________________________________
Adverbs of Frequency
This worksheet is for intermediate and beginner students who need to improve
their usage of patterns involving adverbs of frequency to answer those great How
often questions.
Using the worksheet.
Option
Give students the word cards and have them put them in order. Offer cor-
rection where necessary, then move on to the drill. (This is what I do.)
1. Drill lots of examples. You can do this a number of ways, by asking
questions or by simply drilling five or six solid examples it’s up to you.
2. Review the patterns outlined at the top of the sheet. The best way to do
this is to make it part of the drill. So actually, parts one and two are part of
the same idea.
3. Give students a little practice asking some How often questions. There
are some at the bottom of the sheet if you need but at this point in the les-
son you don’t even need to have given them the sheet. This could all be
done on your white board or by call and response depending on the size of
the class.
4. It’s time to talk! Ideally everything above has only taken you a few min-
utes. The drills and practice DO NOT need to take a long time and the most
time consuming “activity” is the arrangement of the cards and correction.
That should be really easy to do in a very short amount of time. Students
need to talk though so let the How often question be the start of a conver-
sation and let them get talking in short rounds.
5. Use the sheet to review.
Note: There are a lot of adverbs of frequency that we just don’t use that often.
Depending on where you are from or what words are in the texts or other materi-
als you are using some terms may be used more often that others. Some may
also be a bit more difficult to use, such as almost always. Here in Japan lot’s of
students make errors based on the usage of the word almost. I’ve included word
cards for twelve of the adverbs of frequency but you don’t necessarily have to
use all of them. Feel free to pick and choose the terms that are the most useful to
you. On the worksheet above I’ve tried to keep it simple with a shortened list.
HARDLY
NEVER
EVER
ALMOST
RARELY
NEVER
FREQUENTLY SELDOM
OCCASIONALLY SOMETIMES
ALMOST
OFTEN
ALWAYS
ALWAYS USUALLY
