Comparatives (Part One): Talking about Differences
By the end of this week, you will be able to describe different types of people, things, ideas or places using Comparatives and Superlatives.
When we compare someone to another person, we are trying to find the similarities or differences between these people. We can ask ourserlves the following questions when we are doing the comparison:
- What do the people have in common?
- What makes them different?
- Do they look alike?
- Do they resemble each other?
- Are they similar?
- Do they look different? How?
As you have noticed, we use Adjectives such as tall and intelligent to describe people. These Adjectives can be long or short, regular or irregular.
What about Comparatives then? How do we form them? Look at the examples below:
- The girl is shorter than the boy.
- My dog is faster than your cat.
- Their furniture is more comfortable than ours.
- His school is more beautiful than hers.
- I am taller than him.
- She is funnier than I am.
- I am less talkative than her.
- We are cleverer than them. // More clever can also be used.
- Those people are smaller than I thought.
- He is crazier than her.
- You are more serious than him.
- A motorbike is more dangerous than a car.
- You work harder than me.
- I am feeling better than yesterday.
- You are doing worse than last month.
- He is more elegant than his sister.
- It is less disappointing than I feared.
- We are more fortunate than last year.
- It is more exciting than the other one.
- She is more gorgeous than her.
How can we form Comparatives?
What have you noticed? Can you try to make some rules to fom comparatives from what you have read? Today we will be focusing on DIFFERENCES and tomorrow we will deal with SIMILARITIES.
Differences: The features that make each one of us unique.
E.g. He is taller than her.
Similarities: The features that we have in common.
E.g. He is as tall as her.
Let’s have a look at the rules below. What do you think of them? Can you compare them to the rules you previously made?
Can you find some more short and long Adjectives so that you can make the Comparative Form?
Here are more ideas if you have trouble finding some:
Short Adjectives
- High
- Nice
- Kind
- Poor
- Black
- White
- Gentle
- Fast
- Rude
- Long
- Sharp
- Simple
- Quick
- Proud
- Calm
- Fierce
- Huge
- Bold
- Clean
- Slow
Long Adjectives
- Generous
- Crowded
- Available
- Intriguing
- Powerful
- Amusing
- Astonishing
- Worried
- Amazed
- Afraid
- Shapely
- Extreme
- Bewildered
- Embarrassing
- Organised
- Disorganised
- Polite
- Impolite
- Repulsive
- Mysterious
Here are more rules. Did you initially find some of them?
Can you find other Adjectives that behave in the same way?
Here is some help concerning the ones ending with -Y
- Easy
- Busy
- Worthy
- Spicy
- Hungry
- Witty
- Scrawny
- Tiny
- Tidy
- Chubby
- Lazy
- Crazy
- Curly
- Dodgy
- Ugly
- Edgy
- Nosy
- Shy
- Rosy
- Bossy
CHALLENGE: Can you try to find at least five more? If they are words you do not recognise or understand, look for their meaning in a unilingual or bilingual dictionary.
As it is often the case in English, there are words that do not want to follow the same rules as others. These words are called exceptions. Have you noticed that we do not say BADDER? The correct form is WORSE of course. You have to learn these words by heart in order to speak and write properly.
That’s all for today. Tomorrow we will be looking at SIMILARITIES. You will also learn how to form more Comparatives.
Further Exploration:
- Learn more about Comparatives with this well-structured and comprehensive lesson
- English Grammar in context, The Verb BE, Learn English With Africa, September 2017
Watch:
A short and clear video clip about Comparatives by Learn English on Skype.