Spotting adverbs

Adverbs are quite complicated. You cannot tell by the look of a word that it is an adverb. You can recognise it as an adverb only by the work it does in a sentence.
A word may be an adverb in one sentence and a different part of speech in another sentence.

• The job went well. Here well describes the verb 'went', so it is an adverb.
• The well was drained by morning. Here well names something, so it is a noun.
• The well water tasted disgusting. Here well is being used to name a type of 'water', so it is not describing a verb. It is not an adverb here.

'-ly' on the end of a word is a good clue that it's an adverb. Many adverbs are made by adding '-ly' to the end of adjectives
E.g. 'careful' (adjective) becomes 'carefully' (adverb)
Sunita is very careful with her money. She spends her money carefully.

However, lots of other adverbs are irregular

BEWARE! Some words ending in '-ly' are never used as adverbs
E.g. 'friendly', 'lovely', 'lonely'

Also, look out for adverbs that have the same form as adjectives.
'Hard' and 'early' are both adjectives (used to describe people, places and things) AND adverbs (used to tell us more about the verb):

• It's still early. (adjective)
• We arrived early. (adverb)
• He works very hard. (adverb)
• He's a hard man to know. (adjective)

Other adverbs with the same form as adjectives are fast, high, low, late and long.