AN ANALYSIS OF THE USE OF ADVERBS

IN NARRATIVE ESSAYS BY EFL LEARNERS

AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LAS PALMAS DE
GRAN CANARIA

TRABAJO DE FIN DE GRADO

FACULTAD DE FILOLOGÍA

Resumen

This dissertation aims to provide a corpus-based analysis of the

morphological, semantic and syntactic characteristics of
adverbs that have been used by EFL learners at the University
of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in B1 narrative essays, with the
aim of finding out their frequency of occurrence according to
different grammatical parameters and spotting the types of
mistakes and differences observed in higher and lower
intermediate EFL learners’ narrative written production.

Autora: Elena Cruz del Toro

Tutora: Carolina Fátima Rodríguez Juárez

Grado en: Lenguas Modernas

Curso: 2019 – 2020

Convocatoria: Ordinaria (Julio 2020)

INDEX
 CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION................................................................................................. 4

1.1. Main objectives and methodology ................................................................ 5

2. AN OVERVIEW OF ADVERBS IN ENGLISH.................................................. 6

2.1 General description ....................................................................................... 6

2.2 Morphological categories of adverbs ............................................................ 7

2.3 Semantic roles of adverbs ............................................................................. 8

2.4 Adverbial categories.................................................................................... 11

2.4.1. Adjuncts .............................................................................................. 11
2.4.2. Subjuncts ............................................................................................. 13
2.4.3. Disjuncts .............................................................................................. 15
2.4.4. Conjuncts............................................................................................. 15

2.5. Position of adverbs ...................................................................................... 16

3. CORPUS ANALYSIS ........................................................................................ 17

3.1 Description of the corpus.................................................................................. 17

3.2 Low-Intermediate Exams ................................................................................. 18

3.2.1. General analysis ................................................................................. 18
3.2.2. Grammatical functions ........................................................................ 19
3.2.3. Semantical analysis ............................................................................. 26
3.2.4. Morphological analysis ....................................................................... 27
3.2.5. Syntactic analysis ................................................................................ 28
3.2.6. Mistakes that should be considered..................................................... 29
3.2.7. Conclusions ......................................................................................... 31

3.3. High-Intermediate Exams ........................................................................... 31

3.3.1. General Analysis ................................................................................. 31
3.3.2. Grammatical functions ........................................................................ 32
3.3.3. Semantical analysis ............................................................................. 38
3.3.4. Syntactic analysis ................................................................................ 40
3.3.5. Morphological analysis ....................................................................... 41
3.3.6. Notable mistakes ................................................................................. 41

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 3.3.7. Conclusions ......................................................................................... 43

4. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS ..................................................................... 44

References .................................................................................................................. 50

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 1. INTRODUCTION

In this degree I had the pleasure of studying one little poem called Vowels, written by
the famous French poet Rimbaud (1883). It is a simple poem that talks about vowels and
makes poetic descriptions and comparisons among them:

A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels,

I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins:
A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies
which buzz around cruel smells,
Gulfs of shadow; E, whiteness of vapours and of tents,
lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of cow-parsley;
I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips
in anger or in the raptures of penitence;
U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas,
the peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrows
which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads;
O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds,
silences crossed by [Worlds and by Angels]:
–O the Omega! the violet ray of [His] Eyes!

At first sight, it seems that Rimbaud's only objective was to describe the vowels and
compare them with wonderful things. However, his goal went much further and it was
much more important than only that. He wanted to give importance to the simple things
in life, without which it would be difficult for us to live and to which we do not pay
attention or give importance, such as vowels. Without vowels we would not be able to
talk or communicate with others, but we never stop to think how important they are.

And why have I used this comparison? Firstly, for the last four years, besides the
English language, I have been studying other different topics that have been fascinating
and that, together with the study of the different aspects of the English language, have
become my passions, these are literature and French. For this reason, it is important and
satisfactory for me that they are in some way present here, not only because the main
function of this work is to reflect all the knowledge acquired during this degree but also
because it is a humble way of expressing my love and my gratitude for everything they
have taught me and for everything they have given me.

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 Secondly, I think that Rimbaud’s goal and this work’s goal are very similar, since both
try to highlight the importance of common things. It would be quite difficult to be able to
communicate without adverbs, both one-word adverbs and adverbial clauses, because
they help us to give extra information which is, on many occasions, necessary. However,
this grammatical element is not as much studied as other constituents in the clause, such
as verbs or articles, and even much less studied is the way in which it is taught and learned.
So, like the vowels of Rimbaud and the lack of importance they have in a world where
they are absolutely needed, now it is the moment to talk about adverbs and their
importance.

1.1. Main objectives and methodology

The objective of this final dissertation is to analyse the written use of adverbs by EFL
students at University of las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Do they usually use them? And if
so, do they normally use them correctly? Are there differences between high-level
students and low-level students regarding the use of adverbs? What are the most
frequently used types of adverbs? And the least frequently used? This work will try to
answer all these questions by fulfilling the following objectives:

• To provide a description of the grammatical behavior of adverbs in terms of

their morphology, semantics and position in the sentence and to present Quirk
et al.’s adverbial taxonomy (1985).
• To gather a corpus of intermediate narrative essays belonging to English as a
Foreign Language (EFL) intermediate students at the Universidad de Las
Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC).
• To analyse the use of adverbs in the corpus of intermediate EFL ULPGC
students and:
o establish comparisons and differences according to their level in terms
of Quirk et al.’s taxonomy (1985) and their morphological, semantic
and syntactic behaviour.
o observe the frequency of use and most common positional patterns.
o spot common mistakes in the students’ use of adverbs in narrative
essays.
• To draw some conclusions that could be applied to the teaching and learning
of adverbs by EFL intermediate students at university level.

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 In order to fulfill these objectives, I have followed the following methodology:

• Quirk et al.’s theory has been read and studied to provide a more detailed
description of adverbs, their categories, their positions and their uses.

• The corpus has been prepared using 28 official narrative essays that have been
divided into two groups

- Lower-intermediate exams, composed by 14 narrative essays which have

obtained between 2,2 and 6,4 as final mark.

- Higher-intermediate exams, 14 narrative essays whose marks range from 7 to

10

• The corpus has been analysed and comparisons and differences between both
groups have been established. Besides, the most common mistakes and the
number of adverbs used in each group have been studied.

• All the results obtained have been commented in a more general way to obtain
conclusions and answers to each of the questions mentioned at the beginning.

Finally, our analysis is restricted to the use of single-word adverbs and adverbial
phrases. All adverb clauses will be omitted, both in the analysis and investigation of the
work and also in all the theoretical description that is provided in section 2, which is
restricted to the description of single-word adverbs and adverbial phrases.

2. AN OVERVIEW OF ADVERBS IN ENGLISH

2.1 General description

People are constantly using adverbs in their communication process to add information
or to modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, or even complete sentences: “I went to the
cinema yesterday” (adding information to the verb); “I am very tired” (adding information
to the adjective); “He reads surprisingly well” (modifying the adverb); “Unfortunately, I
lost my phone” (modifying the whole clause). Without them, it is quite difficult for writers
or speakers to achieve their communicative purposes, since adverbs, in almost all cases,
provide necessary information, create logical structures and control the flow of discourse.
Despite these significant functions, their presence in a clause is not obligatory, unlike, for
example, the verb, which must always be present. For instance, in “and suddenly she

6
opened the door” and “and [Æ] she opened the door”, it is true that both sentences are
logical and correct, but the presence of the adverb helps the reader to imagine the event,
having more information about the action.

Something similar occurs with linking adverbs, which are explained and analysed in
2.3 and 2.4:

1. We wanted to go to the beach. However, it rained so we had to stay home.

2. We wanted to go to the beach. [Æ] It rained so we had to stay home.

Example 2 is grammatically correct as well, but it seems that something is missing. In

short, the use of adverbs is totally optional, and writers or speakers can decide whether
they want to use them or not.

One of the main characteristics of this word class is its heterogeneity, since there are
many variations of structures and words that function as adverbs; however, all of them
are fixed words that cannot be inflected for number or genre. Besides they can be
juxtaposed within the same clause or sentence, either one next to the other, as in “The girl
was dressed very beautifully” (Quirk et al., 1985: 478), or separated by some other
element of the sentence as in “The student was politely assessed by the teacher,
impressionistically by means of an interview” (Quirk et al., 1985: 482). In other words,
an English speaker or an EFL student can use several adverbs in the same sentence, which
can create confusion and doubts with the position, the order, or even the meaning. This is
the reason why this grammatical category has come to be considered “the most nebulous
and puzzling of the traditional word classes” (Quirk et al., 1985: 438). In order to explain
these variations as clearly as possible, in the following sections adverbs will be analysed
from a morphological. semantic and syntactic point of view as well as according to the
different adverbial categories they belong to.

2.2 Morphological categories of adverbs

Morphologically speaking, three main types of adverbs can be distinguished: simple,

compound and derivational. Simple adverbs are those types of adverbs that are formed
by just one lexical item like just, hard, only or enough. The next group, compound
adverbs, are composed, as its name indicates, by two words or lexical items such as
somehow, sometimes or nowhere. Finally, derivational adverbs are created by adding
some different suffixes to other root words or stems and they change the grammatical

7
category of the word to which they are attached. The most representative adverbs of this
morphological group are those in which the word is constructed by adding the suffix -ly
to an adjective: interesting – interestingly; slow – slowly; constant – constantly. But there
are other less representative suffixes which also create derivational adverbs such as: -wise
“likewise”, “otherwise”, “clockwise”; -ward “northward”, “forward”; -ways “sideways”;
-long “headlong”.

2.3 Semantic roles of adverbs

Semantically, adverbs can be divided into manner, place, time, duration, frequency,
degree, focusing, modal, evaluative, viewpoint and linking adverbs (Carter and McCarthy,
2006: 456). There are more complex divisions such as that made by Quirk et al. (1985),
but our analysis will follow Carter and McCarthy's (2006), since it is normally the one
used in EFL textbooks.

Type Function Example

Manner To refer to how something happens The vicar spoke very nicely
Place To refer to where something happens Sign here please
Time To refer to when something happens Her father died recently
Duration To refer to length of time over which No, I’m not staying there
something happens permanently
Frequency To refer to how often something I often go and see them
happens
Degree To refer to how much, to what degree I was greatly relieved when
something happens we were finally rid of her
Focusing To focus on or specifies an entity Customer: Just ice cream
please
Modal To express degrees of truth, possibility, She most probably thinks I’m
necessity, etc joking
Evaluative To judge or comment on the event, or I stupidly forgot to mention
to give the speaker’s opinion the meeting to him
Viewpoint To express the perspective or I personally don’t think you
standpoint from which the speaker sees would hate it, Elaine
things
Linking To link and relate clauses and sentences She wanted to study but there
to one another wasn’t any provision.
However, her younger sisters
are now studying
Table 1. Main types of adverbs according to their meaning (Carter and McCarthy, 2006:
456)

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 Manner adverbs modify verbs, describing how someone does something. For instance,
in “Those flowers <grow> quickly, don’t they?” (Carter and McCarthy, 2006), the adverb
explains the way in which the flowers are growing. They answer the question “How?”
Happily, hard, loudly, successfully, slowly, sadly, ingeniously, violently, etc. Manner
adverbs usually come after the verb they modify (“she <sings> well”) or after a verb
phrase, if there is any, in which there would be elements between the verb and the adverb:
“she <plays> the piano beautifully”.

On the other hand, time adverbs answer the question “when?”. They express a fixed
temporal position: yesterday, tomorrow, later, soon, today, now, then, etc. They usually
go in end position, or in initial position for emphasis, but they cannot be in medial position
(Hewings, 2005: 152): “I went to the park yesterday” or “Yesterday I went to the park”.
In contrast, there are adverbs that are related to a definite period of time, but to the
frequency and duration of something. Frequency expressions answer the question “How
often?”: frequently, always, never, daily, weekly, once, sometimes, etc. Following Quirk
et al., time-frequency adverbs are subdivided into definite frequency and indefinite
frequency (1985: 542):

- Definite time-frequency adverbs are in turn subdivided into: period frequency:

weekly, daily, hourly, monthly, etc.; occasion frequency: once: twice, thrice, etc.
- Indefinite time frequency adverbs can be grouped into four subclasses: usual
occurrence: commonly, habitually, normally, etc.; continuous frequency: always,
constantly, continually, permanently, etc.; high frequency: frequently, often,
regularly, etc.; and low frequency: never, infrequently, seldom, rarely, etc.

Degree adverbs show the intensity or “degree” of an adjective (“extremely cold”), a

verb (“I badly want it”) or another adverb (“too slowly”). They can amplify the intensity,
going upwards on the scale (amplifiers): “They totally believed in the leader’s integrity”;
“They like her very much” (Quirk et al., 1985:591), or in an opposite way, they can make
a diminution of the item modified, going downwards on the scale (downtoners): “I almost
resigned”; “I partly agree with you” (Quirk et al., 1985:598).

Focusing adverbs are used to focus the reader’s attention on a part of the clause, giving
that part an important role over the rest of the sentence, and this focused part can be “as
wide as the predication or as narrow as a single constituent of an element (such as a
premodifying adjective in a noun phrase as subject or an auxiliary within a verb phrase)”

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(Quirk et al., 1985:604). They are normally placed in medial position and they can
precede or follow the part focused: “I was simply <taking my dog for a walk>”; “<The
girls> especially objected to his manners”; “Even <Bob> was there” (Quirk et al.,
1985:604).

Modal, evaluative and viewpoint adverbs are similar since they three are comment
adverbs, expressing the generators of the utterances’ mind: comments, judgements, or
viewpoints. Modal adverbs “indicate how likely we think something is” (Hewings,
2005:156), in other words, to what degree we consider what we are saying is true
(decidedly, clearly, obviously, apparently, doubtless, etc.). Evaluative adverbs “show our
judgement of someone’s actions” (Hewings, 2005:156) giving our opinion about the
events (bravely, stupidly, carelessly, correctly, rightly, foolishly, etc.). Finally, viewpoint
adverbs, indicate the point of view from which the clause, sentence or utterance has been
made, such as politically, economically, geographically, linguistically, personally, etc.).
Comment adverbs usually go in initial position since they modify the whole clause, but
they can appear in other positions:

- Modal adverb: “You would have probably missed the plane” (Quirk et al., 1985:
628).
- Evaluative adverb: “Though he was quite rightly dismissed, he was given six
month’s salary” (Quirk et al., 1985:628).
- Viewpoint adverb:“The brothers may be alike physically, but they have very
different personalities” (Hewings, 2005:156).

Lastly, linking adverbs are those which connect the sentences in a written text or in a
spoken discourse. Without them it could be said that there would not be a narration but a
set of phrases without a logical relationship between them, a lack of cohesion. According
to Costa (2015):

Linking adverbials should be seen as linguistic elements which essentially serve

the purpose of bringing a sense of semantic connection (i.e. cohesion) to
messages of a text. Without them, a certain text could be rather difficult to be
interpreted, for the ideas it presents would not logically follow one another, but
rather, simply be sequenced in space. (p. 19)

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 2.4 Adverbial categories

Quirk et al. (1985, 1990) focus their study of adverbs on their grammatical functions,
therefore, this part of our analysis will strictly follow their theory. According to these
linguists, adverbs are divided into four grammatical categories: adjuncts, subjuncts,
disjuncts and conjuncts (1985:501). The main difference between these four types of
adverbs is the implication that each one has within the clause or sentence in which they
are placed: adjuncts (3) and subjuncts (4) “are relatively integrated within the structure
of the clause” (Quirk et al., 1990: 440), and, on the other hand, disjuncts (5) and conjuncts
(6) “have a more peripheral relation in the sentence” (Quirk et al., 1990: 440)1:

3. The dog is not allowed to run outside.

4. She is a really intelligent child.
5. Rightly, Mrs Jensen consulted her lawyer.
6. He didn’t like the food. However, he didn’t complain about it.

2.4.1. Adjuncts
According to Quirk et al., adjuncts are divided into predication adjuncts, which are in
turn subdivided into those which are obligatory and those which are optional, and
sentence adjuncts (1985:505). Optional predication adjuncts, example 7, as its name
indicates, are those adverbs that are not required by the verbal predicate within the
sentence since, without them, the sentence has the same sense (someone finds something
[somewhere]), whereas obligatory predication adjuncts must be present in the clause and
are required by the semantics of the verb (someone puts something somewhere), as
illustrated in example 8.

7. She found the letter on the kitchen table.

8. She put the letter on the kitchen table.

On the other hand, sentence adjuncts are also optional items. What differentiates them
from optional predication adjuncts is that they have a more peripheral role and can be
moved from the end to the initial part of the sentence, as we can see in the following
examples:

9. Ralph kissed his mother on the platform.

1
All the examples used in this section have been taken from Quirk et al. (1985, 1990), chapters 7 and
8.

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 10. On the platform, Ralph kissed his mother.

However, the most important characteristics of adjuncts, and therefore the part of the
adjuncts theory that will be studied throughout this work, are those that are related to their
semantic roles. Quirk et al. classify them into adjuncts of space, adjuncts of time and
process adjuncts (1985: 514-565), which means that adjuncts are those adverbs that
basically answer the questions “where?” “when?” and “how?”:

- Adjuncts of space are those that denote position and/or direction: above, across,
under, here, there, near, away, back, between, anywhere, in, far, everywhere…
Some of them indicate direction but not position like after, aside, before, over,
by…:
11. I think you should now turn left.
12. I have the key here.
- Adjuncts of time are divided into:
a) Time-position adjuncts which express the point of time in which something
occurred: again, early, now, sometime, immediately, before, finally, later,
once, tomorrow, yesterday…:
13. Come and see us again.
14. He recently had an accident.
b) Time-frequency adjuncts, which are used to express how often something
is done and can be further divided into the types that are shown in Figure 1
below:
15. Committee meetings take place weekly.
16. Does Jenny usually stay up so late?

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 PERIOD FREQUENCY: hourly,
nightly, monthly, annually, weekly,
daily...
Definite frequency
OCCASION FREQUENCY: once,
twice, thrice...

USUAL OCCURRENCE: commonly

Time frequency habitually, generally, normally,
adjuncts usually, sometimes...

CONTINUOUS FREQUENCY:
always, constantly, continually,
continuouly, pemanently...
Indefinite frequency

HIGH FREQUENCY: frequently

often, regularly, repeteadly...

LOW FREQUENCY: Infrequently,

never, seldom, rarely, irregularly,
occasionally...

Figure 1. Classification of time frequency adjuncts (Quire et al., 1985:542-543)

- Process adjuncts are divided into manner and means adjuncts.

a) Manner adjuncts, expressing how something is done: loudly, coldly, stupidly,
slowly…:
17. They began arguing loudly.
b) Means adjuncts shows the way or method that was used in order to do
something: intonationally, surgically…:
18. He decided to treat the patient surgically.

2.4.2. Subjuncts
The term subjunct is used to refer to those adverbials that “have, to a greater or lesser
degree, a subordinate role in comparison with other clause element” (Quirk et al., 1985:
566). They can subordinate the whole clause (wide orientation subjuncts) or only a
specific element of the clause (narrow orientation subjuncts):

a) Wide orientation subjuncts are formed by viewpoint and courtesy subjuncts:

- Viewpoint subjuncts “can be roughly paraphrased by ‘if we consider what we are
saying from an (adjective) point of view’” (Quirk et al., 1985:568):
19. Architecturally, it is a magnificent conception.
20. Morally, politically and economically, it is urgent that the government should act
more effectively on aid to developing countries.

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- Courtesy subjuncts are used to express politeness:
21. Will you kindly take your seats?
22. We cordially invite you to our party.
b) Narrow orientation subjuncts are formed by emphasizers, intensifiers and
focusing subjuncts:
- Emphasizers “have a reinforcing effect on the truth value of the clause or part of
the clause to which they apply (Quirk et al., 1985: 583): really, actually,
obviously, clearly, definitely, frankly…:
23. I honestly don’t know what he wanted.
24. She plainly likes the dress.
- Intensifier subjuncts are related with the semantic role of degree; they do not
always express an increase, but they denote high and low degrees, in other words,
they can be:
a) Amplifiers (high degree): absolutely, completely, extremely, quite, much,
deeply, greatly, so, strongly, totally…:
25. They fully appreciate our problems.
26. They totally believed in the leader’s integrity.
b) Downtoners (low degree): almost, nearly, practically, partly, partially,
merely, only, simply, hardly, barely, scarcely…:
27. I almost resigned.
28. She scarcely knows me.
- Focusing subjuncts make the reader or listener pay attention to a specific part of
the sentence: alone, exactly, just, only, merely, exclusively, especially, mainly,
mostly, notably, particularly…:
29. I was simply <taking my dog for a walk>.
30. She is charming only to her <wealthy> clients.
- Time subjuncts are divided into time-relationship subjuncts and other time
subjuncts (Quirk et al., 1985:579-583).
a) Time-relationship subjuncts show a relationship between two time positions,
and they are basically, already, since and yet:
31. I already like him.
32. I still haven’t spoken to him.
33. Haven’t you seen him yet?

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 b) Other time subjuncts are represented by the adverb just that expresses a time
position “‘at this/that precise moment’ or ‘very recently’” (Quirk et al., 1985:
581):
34. He’s just stopped talking.
35. I’m just finishing an article on the subject.

2.4.3. Disjuncts
Disjuncts adverbs have a superior role over the rest of the elements of the sentence.
Unlike adjuncts and subjuncts, disjuncts are completely isolated from the other items, and
their presence modifies the whole sentence. That is the reason why they are considered,
if there are any, the most important element of the whole sentence.

They are classified into two different categories: style disjuncts and content disjuncts.

- Style disjuncts comment the form the speaker or writer is saying or writing
something. They can express manner and modality (36): crudely, frankly,
honestly2, truthfully; or respect (37): generally, literally, personally, strictly.
36. Frankly, I am tired.
37. Personally, I find the music too arid.
- Content disjuncts are used by the generator to comment the content of what is
being said. There are two types of content disjuncts:
a) They can evaluate the degree of truth of the utterance (admittedly, certainly,
indeed, obviously, apparently, possibly, maybe, basically…):
38. Evidently, he doesn’t object.
- Or they can judge what is said (rightly, correctly, incorrectly, justly, reasonably,
wrongly, amazingly…):
39. Understandably, we were all extremely annoyed when we received the letter.

2.4.4. Conjuncts
Conjuncts adverbs connect two utterances, either paragraphs, clauses or sentences
“and they do so by expressing at the same time the semantic relationship (e.g. of time or
contingency) obtaining between them” (Quirk et al., 1990:184):

2
Honestly, like many other adverbs, can belong to two different categories, subjuncts or disjuncts. What
classifies this adverb into one of both categories is its role in the clause: subjuncts are placed within the
sentence, whereas disjuncts are separated by a comma from the rest of the sentence they are modifying in
order to show their superior role and their scope over the rest of the clause.

15
 40. First the economy is beginning to recover, and second(ly) unemployment figures
have not increased this month.
41. She has some assistance – for instance, a secretary.
42. .You haven’t answered my question; in other words, you disapprove of my
proposal.

Quirk et al. propose a semantic division in order to organise them (1985: 634-636):

A) Listing:
(i) Enumerative: first, second, thirdly, next, then, finally, lastly, etc.
(ii) Additive: correspondingly, moreover, besides, furthermore, again,
likewise, similarly, etc.
B) Summative: altogether, therefore, thus, overall, etc.
C) Appositive: namely, thus, specifically, etc.
D) Resultative: accordingly, consequently, hence, so, now, somehow, etc.
E) Inferential: otherwise, else, then, etc.
F) Contrastive:
(i) Reformulatory: better, rather, alternatively, etc.
(ii) Replacive: again, worse, better, again, etc.
(iii) Antithetic: instead, appositely, contrariwise, conversely, etc.
(iv) Concessive: anyhow, anyway, besides, however, nevertheless,
nonetheless, notwithstanding, still, though, etc.
G) Transitional:
(i) Discoursal: incidentally, now, etc.
(ii) Temporal: meantime, meanwhile, subsequently, eventually, etc.

2.5. Position of adverbs

Besides the divisions presented so far in terms of their study from the point of view of
their morphology, semantics and grammatical function, it is important to keep in mind
the different positions adverbs can occupy in the English language since there are adverbs
that can play different grammatical roles according to where they are placed in the
sentence. What basically determines their grammatical functions is the syntactic position
chosen by the writer or the speaker as we can see in the example given by Quirk et al. in
which the adverb frankly has different effects in each different position (1985:647):

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 43. He admitted his mistakes frankly. (Adjunct)
44. He frankly admitted his mistakes. (Subjunct)
45. Frankly, he was contemptuous of the pardon. (Disjunct)
46. His frankly admitted mistakes were pardoned. (Adjunct)
47. His frankly extraordinary attitude dismayed his friends. (Disjunct)

Generally speaking, there are three common positions in which adverbs are placed:

a. Initial position (I): Here the adverb is placed before the subject.
48. Suddenly, the light turned on.
49. Sadly, my brother had to leave the town.
b. Medial position (M): Between the subject and verb:
50. Rihanna’s concert really disappointed her fans.
51. I always take care of my sister.
c. End position (E): The adverb goes at the end of the clause following all the rest
of the elements.
52. The light was fading rapidly.
53. “She asserted her answer quietly.

However, we should not miss the fact that there exists the exception of the auxiliary
verbs: In this case, adverbs would be placed after the first auxiliary verb, and it would be
considered medial position: “I have never gone to London” or “They are seriously
considering him for the post” (Quirk et al., 1985:492).

Normally, the most common position of adverbs is after the verb in the case of
intransitive verbal predicates, and in the case of transitive predicates, after the argument
that has the function of direct object. As it was said before, there may be several adverbs
in the same sentence. According to Carter et al. (2000), if we have several adverbs
together, there is a pattern that has to be followed: manner – place – time – definite
frequency – reason (p. 107).

3. CORPUS ANALYSIS
3.1 Description of the corpus
Our corpus of analyses is constituted by official exams provided by my tutor
corresponding to the first course of the six English subjects that are contemplated in the
study plan of the Degree in Modern Languages. Before explaining the procedure carried

17
out to create this corpus, it is important to point out that all the exams were received
without students’ names, and, therefore, they were completely anonymous, and their data
protection has been totally respected.

Our corpus is formed by 28 B1 English narrative essays, which are divided into two
groups: lower-level intermediate and higher-level intermediate narrative texts. The lower-
level intermediate group is formed by those exams that have obtained from 0 to 6,99 as a
final mark, and all the exams that have been given from a 7 to a 10 constitute the higher-
level intermediate group.

The analysis of the 28 exams consisted in extracting and studying all the adverbs
written by the students in each one of them. Each exam is studied individually first so that
later the comparison between both groups can be made in a more general study.

Regarding the design and evaluation criteria of the exam, each of them must contain a
story with a length between 200 and 250 words and it must begin with the following line:

“I picked up the phone and heard, “It’s Tom. I must see you at once!”

The evaluation criteria are divided into 4 elements that make a total grade of 10:

- Structure/layout: 0.5
- Lexical resources: 5.25
- Grammar: 3.75
- Spelling and pronunciation: 0,5

3.2 Low-Intermediate Exams

3.2.1. General analysis
In this section, low-level exams will be analysed. As explained above, this part of the
analysis is conducted on all those 14 exams that have obtained between 0 and 6.99 as a
final mark (the marks in this group range from 2,2 to 6,4) and they will be assigned
numbers from 1 to 14, respectively, to be able to mention them in the analysis. The
number of adverbs obtained from these exams is 140. They are all written below with the
number of times each one has been used; if there is no number next to the adverb, this
means that the adverb has been written only once:

So (11), very (10), later (7), then (7), there (7), just (6), only (6), again (5), finally (5),
maybe(5), never (5), really (5), still (5), before(4), suddenly (4), always (3), immediately (3),
now(3), well (3), here (2), first (2), much (2), slowly (2), tonight (2), too (2), absolutely,

18
 aggressively, ago, almost, already, also, apparently, back, basically, bravely, even, extremely,
hardly, in, individually, inside, loudly, nervously, obviously, quite, rapidly, since, someday,
sometimes, usually.

After analysing all the narrative essays in this group, a lack of variety of adverbs was
appreciated, both grammatically and semantically speaking, because of three reasons:
they repeat adverbs on many occasions; they use common and simple words that are
normally learned at the beginning of the language learning process; the structures in
which the adverbs are found are not very complex, but simple. Therefore, it can be
thought that their goal in the exam was not originality or variability but the correctness,
even if this implied the repetition and poverty of the language.

This fact can be related to the strategy known as “avoidance”, term that was first used
by Schachter in 1974, through which students avoid grammatical structures or lexical
items because they do not have sufficient knowledge of the language to use it, and,
instead, they use simpler ones in order not to make mistakes. Besides, our university
context is really important since they “avoid using lexical or grammatical expressions
they find difficult because they do not want to risk their scores in the oral or written exams
they take” (Ulusan, 2018: 38). Sometimes, students do not remember that the main
purpose of learning English is to be able to communicate with this language and they tend
to focus on getting higher marks, therefore, it is normal that they try to achieve success
in the exams developing these types of strategies (Ulusan, 2018: 39). As a result, they
pass the exams using poor language, and in this case, low variability of adverbs. By “low”
variability, we mean that, after obtaining the total number of adverbs, there is not an equal
or balanced division between the classes of adverbs, grammatically (adjuncts, subjuncts,
disjuncts, conjuncts), semantically (manner, place, time, duration, frequency, degree,
focusing, modal, evaluative, viewpoint and linking) and morphologically (simple,
derivational and compound) speaking.

3.2.2. Grammatical functions

From the 140 adverbs registered in the low-intermediate narrative essays, 65 are
adjuncts (46,43%), 49 are subjuncts (35%), 18 are conjuncts (12,86%) and only 8 are
disjuncts (5,71%). All of them are shown in Table 2, in which they are classified
according to the grammatical classes they belong to together with the total number of
instantiations in each category.

19
 Grammatical Adjuncts Subjuncts Disjuncts Conjuncts
classes
Number of 27 16 4 4
adverbs
Occurrences 65 49 8 18
Adverbs always, never, so, really, basically, then, first, so,
registered in later, again, much, too, obviously, finally
the exams individually, only, already, apparently,
before, also, still, maybe
immediately, here, even, very,
there, well, just, hardly,
sometimes, extremely,
suddenly, rapidly, absolutely,
inside, nervously, quite, almost
slowly, loudly,
bravely, tonight,
back, finally,
usually, now,
someday, since,
aggressively, in
Table 2. Frequency of appearance of adverbs according to their grammatical category in
low-intermediate narrative essays.

Adjuncts

The adjuncts used by students in the low-intermediate narrative essays that have been
analysed in the corpus are those related to space, time and manner:

1. Space adjuncts expressing position and direction: back, here, in, inside (54) and
there (55):
54. The mysterious girl had a shot and he was trying to keep the blood inside with
his t-shirt. (Exam 7)3
55. In fact, he said that if Laura live there and I said that yes, that I am Laura.
(Exam 2)
2. Time adjuncts. Of the subtypes of this category suggested by Quirk et al. (1985:
526-555), the following examples have been registered:

3
All the examples of the students have been written exactly as they have written them, grammatical
mistakes included.

20
 a) Time-position adjuncts, which “refer to a span of time within which, at some
point of time, the event took place” (Quirk et al., 1985: 51): again (56), ago,
before, finally, immediately (57), later, now, since, someday (58), tonight:
56. I could talk again with one of my best friends of childhood. (Exam 6)
57. He inmediatly left. (exam 5)
58. Days passed and me and my family continued with the hope, maybe Tom
wakes up someday. (Exam 12)
b) Time-frequency adjuncts, which can further divided into two other subclasses,
definite frequency and indefinite frequency adverbs: always, never(59),
sometimes (60) and usually (61), belong to indefinite frequency adjuncts,
representing, following Quirk et al. (1985:543-544): usual occurrences
(sometimes); continuous frequencies (always and usually); and low
frequencies (never).
59. She never want it. (Exam 1)
60. Tom is my friend since I was a child, apparently a good person, very loyal
with his friend, and always want to help everyone, but sometimes I saw certain
behavior with me. (Exam 5)
61. So I told him to meet in the bar where we usually meet. (Exam 10)
c) Simply time adjuncts, which answer the question “when?”: suddenly (in an
instant). However, this adverb could also belong to “manner with time duration”
class, since it expresses the way in which something is done and the time someone
took to do it e.g.: “He stopped the car suddenly” (in such a way that it took a very
short time)” (Quirk et al., 1985:560). In example 62, the adverb is not expressing
how that person knocked the door but when the situation took place since the
adverb is not modifying only the main verb. The same occurs in example 63,
where the adjunct is not related to the verb “to appear”, referring to how Tom
appeared, but when that event happened. So, what determines the grammatical
class of this adverb is its position in the clause and whether it is related to another
item of the sentence or not.
62. Suddenly, someone knocked my door.
63. Suddenly, Tom appeared really nervous.
This combination of manner and time duration can also be associated to the
adverbs rapidly and slowly, which have been registered in exams number 7, 8 and

21
 13. In example 64, the student did it in a way that will reduce the time the writer
spent doing it. The same happens in examples 65 and 66:
64. Just about one minute to think rapidly without any death. (Exam 7)
65. The door started to slowly open by itself. (Exam 8)
66. The minutes were slowly passing. (Exam 13)
3. Finally, manner adjuncts, which describe the way in which something has been
made: aggressively, bravely, individually (67), loudly, nervously and well (68):
67. We decided to do the exercise individually. (Exam 1)
68. The call sounded like if something isn’t going very well. (Exam 7)

Disjuncts

Regarding disjuncts, their level of occurrence is quite limited with only 3 instances:
basically (exam 4), apparently (exam 5) and obviously (exam 7). Quirk et al. establish
two different groups of content disjuncts (1985:620):

a. Type (a) degree of truth disjuncts, which “present a comment on the truth value
of what is said, expressing the extent to which, and the conditions under which, the
speaker believes that what he is saying is true” (Quirk et al., 1985: 620). They can express
sureness or doubt, for instance: certainly, clearly, definitely, doubtless, maybe, perhaps,
possibly, undoubtedly, etc.

b. Type (b) value judgment disjuncts, which express some evaluation or opinion
about what is said (Quirk et al., 1985: 621), such as rightly, correctly, incorrectly, justly,
unjustly, etc.

Sometimes, disjuncts and subjuncts can be mixed up, since there are adverbs that can
belong to both classes. What makes these words be part of one or another type is the
originator of the utterance’s intention. For example, in example 69, the disjunct obviously
is evaluating the whole clause and expressing a personal viewpoint:

69. He stopped me and said ‘Please, let me enter in your house and explain you
everything’. Obviously, I let him because I was waiting for a logical explanation.
(Exam 7)

In contrast, in the example provided by Quirk et al. (1985:584) the same adverb is not
acting as a disjunct but as a subjunct since it is not evaluating the whole clause, but it is

22
emphasizing only a part, the verb “to want”. In addition, the subjunct in this same example
does not reflect the generator of the sentence’s opinion or judgement but a third person’s
reflection, idea or action.

70. They obviously don’t want it.

Finally, subjuncts “are positioned next to a part of the communication, without being
separated intentionally or by punctuation” (Quirk et al., 1985:583) whereas disjuncts are
more isolated. The same occurs in the other two instances of disjuncts found in exams
number 4 and 5, which have content disjuncts features:

71. It was embarrassing to me but basically, I said to him to remove my number.

72. Tom is my friend since I was a child, apparently a good person, very loyal with
his friend, and always want to help everyone but sometimes I saw certain behavior
with me.

Conjuncts

As it has been explained before, conjuncts are the third type of adverbs most frequently
used after adjuncts and subjuncts: “They have the function of conjoining independent
units rather than one of contributing another facet of information to a single integrated
unit” (Quirk et al., 1985:631). The students in our corpus used adverbs of two different
subclasses of conjuncts:

a. Listing enumerative conjuncts adverbs, which order the arguments given by the
speaker or, as in our case, the writer: finally, first and then.

b. Resultative conjuncts, which indicate that the content of the clause is a

consequence of the previous events: so.

Conjuncts, like disjuncts, are detached from the rest of the clause, since their function
is to connect two different units, either clauses, sentences or paragraphs, giving the text a
cohesion and having a higher role than the rest of the items of the sentence. Apart from
that, they do not share their semantic roles with other types of grammatical adverbs. As
examples, consider example 73 below:

73. First, I was shocked. Then, I did not know that any Tom have got my telephone
number. So, I decided to act as if I know him but at the same time I was wondering
myself who is that. (Exam 4)

23
 The first two adverbs, first and then, are ordering the sequence of the events, and the
last one, so, is expressing what the student did as a consequence of the first two sentences.
They three are separated from the rest of the clause and they have an important role over
the clauses, since they are related “to the speaker’s comment in one quite specific respect:
his assessment of how he views the connection between two linguistics units” (Quirk et
al., 1985:632).

Subjuncts

We have only registered 9 examples of subjuncts in the analysed narrative essays

(already, also, even, just, only, really, still, too, very), which are all given by Quirk et al.
(1985) in their classification:

a) Intensifiers are directly connected with degree semantic adverbs: absolutely,

almost, extremely, hardly, much, quite, so and very. They do not always express
the increase of the intensified item, rather “an intensifying subjunct indicates a
point on an abstractly conceived intensity scale; and the point indicated may be
relatively low or relatively high” (Quirk et al., 1985:589), so they can be
amplifiers (high degree) or downtoners (low degree). Therefore, absolutely
extremely, much, quite, so and very are amplifier intensifiers because they have a
growing effect, as we can see in “so fast” (exam 2), “very scared” (exam 5),
“extremely terrible accident” (exam 12) and “quite far from reality” (exam 12).
Almost and hardly, in contrast, are downtoners since they represent the opposite,
a lowering effect: “I hardly slept last night” (my own example) or “I almost broke
it with my shoulder” (exam 8).
b) Focusing subjuncts concentrate the reader’s attention on a specific part of the
utterance: also, even, just, only, too. Example 74 illustrates the use of the subjunct
too:
74. My crush said that wants to see me. […] I said that <I want to see him> too.
(Exam 2)
What does too modify or refer to? The student <wants to see him> too, focusing
the reader’s attention on the verb “to want” and on what the writer wants. The
subjunct too normally follows the focused part of the sentence, being placed in
end position (Quirk et al., 1985:604). As regards example 75, in the case of the
subjunct even, what is really important for the student is the fact that he cannot

24
 <remember> the other person’s name, so the writer tries to give more importance
to that part of the sentence:
75. Imagine the situation, he knows me and I could not even <remember his
name>. (Exam 4)
In the example with also (76), the person speaking also <said> what followed the
verb. The focus is on the verb “to say” and on what is said:
76. And he also <said>: ‘you give me your number to still have contact with my
friend because you was worried for him’. (Exam 4)
c) Time-relationship subjuncts connect two time positions, such as already and still,
which have been used by the student in exam number 4. In example 77, by that
time the student had come to know what was going on. In example 78, the student
tries to connect the past with the present, since the event took place in the past
although the student wrote “give” instead of “gave”, which would be the correct
tense. So, one person gave the telephone number to another one in order to have
contact throughout all the time that has passed, past and present, to have contact
in the past and still have it in the present. In example 79, the adverb is connecting
the past with the present, since the person to whom the question is addressed has
remained in the same place (“there”) from a point in the past to the present:
77. I was acting like I already knew what was going on. (Exam 4)
78. You give me your number to still have contact with my friend because you
was worried for him. (Exam 4)
79. Are you still there? (Exam 9)
d) Emphasizer subjuncts like really are connected with the semantic role of modality,
having a reinforcing effect. As Adel and Reppen (2008) explain, emphasizers:
Contribute the expression of modality or stance: they add to the force of
the modified predicate and their syntactic scope extends over the whole
predicate, they strengthen the illocutionary point of the utterance and
signal that what is being emphasized is taken to be true and/or important.
(p. 39)
The four adverbs used by two different students are followed by adjectives, whose
meaning is emphasized by the adverb really: “really rich” and “really annoying”
from exam number 4; “really nervous” and “really mad” from exam number 5.

25
3.2.3. Semantical analysis
All the adverbs analysed above in a grammatical way are now classified depending on
their semantical roles. As already mentioned, there are eleven types, represented in table
3, in which the adverbs used by the students are placed in their respective classes:

Semantic roles Number Occurrences Adverbs registered in the exams

and number of of
times used adverbs
Manner 9 10 Individually, well, hardly, rapidly,
nervously, slowly, loudly, bravely,
aggressively
Place 5 12 Here, there, inside, in, back
Time 11 34 Later, again, immediately, before, now,
ago, suddenly, just, finally, tonight,
someday
Duration 2 7 Still, already
Frequency 4 9 Always, never, sometimes, usually
Degree 9 28 So, really, much, very, really, almost,
quite, extremely, absolutely
Focusing 5 14 Only, just, also, even, too,
Modal 4 8 Basically, apparently, obviously, maybe
Evaluative 0
Viewpoint 0
Linking 4 18 Then, first, so, finally
Table 3. Classification of adverbs from a semantic point of view (low-intermediate level)

The types of adverbs most frequently used, semantically speaking, are time adverbs,
with 34 words, degree adverbs, with 28 items and linking adverbs, with 18 occurrences.
In contrast, there are no viewpoint and evaluative adverbs. In the middle of this scale of
frequency, we have placed focusing (14), place (12), frequency (9), modal (8) and
duration (7) adverbs.

In writing, linking adverbs play a very important role since they are the ones that shape
the text. According to Costa (2015), “they function as a means of bringing unity to a text,
i.e., they enable separate parts of the text - be it clauses, sentences, or paragraphs - to be
interpreted as belonging to the same whole” (p. 18). Going back to example 73, we can

26
see that the linking adverbs employed here (first, then, so) indicate the order and the
structure of the story. However, it is important to point out that although linking adverbs
are the third most frequently used semantic type, there is no variety used, since only four
different ones have been used 18 times.

Time adverbs have a similar role as they are very important in narrative writing. In our
context, students are narrating a story which supposedly already took place, so they need
to order the events adding time adverbs that take readers to those episodes and time
positions.

80. Now the friendship is stronger than when we were children. (Exam 6)
81. Five minutes later. (Exam 1)
82. He immediately left. (Exam 5)

3.2.4. Morphological analysis

If we study the variety instead of the actual instantiations or occurrences of adverbs
used for each morphological category, simple and derivational adverbs have an equal
division, since there are 22 simple adverbs and 22 derivational items. However, this
division becomes unequal if we focus our attention on the number of occurrences, because
students have used 83 simple adverbs and only 42 derivational adverbs. Besides, only 10
compound adverbs were registered (Table 4):

Morphological Number of Occurrences Adverbs registered in the

category and adverbs exams
number of words

Simple 22 83 Never, again, here, there,

before, well, now, so,
much, only, still, even,
very, just, then, first, too,
also, back, since, in,
quite
Derivational 22 42 Later, individually,
immediately, apparently,
suddenly, hardly,
rapidly, really, already,
basically, obviously,
finally, always, almost,
nervously, usually,
slowly, loudly, bravely,

27
 absolutely, extremely,
aggressively
Compound 5 10 Sometimes, inside,
tonight, maybe, someday
Table 4. Classification of adverbs from a morphological point of view (low-intermediate
level)

3.2.5. Syntactic analysis

After identifying and counting all the adverb positions registered in the low-level
narrative essays, these are the results: 57 adverbs are used initial position, 37 in medial
position, and 46 adverbs have an end position.

Initial position examples:

83. Basically, I said to him to remove my number. (Exam 4)

84. Then, I heard the ring of the door. (Exam 2)
85. Finally he arrived and stayed a week in the island. (Exam 6)
86. Maybe someone has entered! (Exam 12)

Medial position examples:

87. He was shocked about everything that had just happened 30 minutes ago. (Exam
7)
88. I could not even remember his name. (Exam 4)
89. He inmediatly left. (Exam 5)
90. I was very nervous. (Exam 11)

End position examples:

91. We decided to do the exercise individually. (Exam 1)

92. The call sounded like if something isn’t going very well. (Exam 7)
93. I said that I wanted to see him too. (Exam 2)
94. Every second I spent there. (Exam 12)

As already mentioned, the position of adverbs is a crucial element of their use, because
the same item can often play different grammatical roles. It is for that reason that if a
student places an adverb in the wrong position, the structure of the utterance can be

28
instantly broken, getting either a different goal from the one the generator wanted or
directly deriving into an illogical sentence.

3.2.6. Mistakes that should be considered

As it has been mentioned before, the objective or motivation of these students was the
security of the correct use of this type of words since they want to pass the exam, which
means they prefer accuracy and perfection rather than originality and variability.
However, this objective has not been fully achieved since there are several mistakes that
should not have been committed at this particular level, which leads us to think that
perhaps the scarce presence of this grammatical element is not only due to the use of the
risk avoidance strategy but also to their limited knowledge and lack of lexical resources.
It is important to remember that this part of the analysis studies the lowest marks achieved
in the class. Therefore, the idea that they have tried to write only what they really know
is not rejected, but it is also necessary to take into account the possible lack of knowledge
that does not allow them to use certain words in this language, either because they do not
know their translation or because they do not know how to use them.

Misspelling

In the fourteen exams, a total of seven misspelled adverbs have been found: allways
(exam 1); inmediately (exam 2); inmediatly (2) (exams 2 and 9), aparently and suddently
(exam 5) and absolutly and extremelly (exam 12). It is true that 8 misspelled adverbs from
the 140 that have been written is a very low number since they represent only a 5% of the
total number of adverbs. However, these adverbs are quite common words in the English
language, words that should be totally known.

With the adverb immediately, there are two different types of misspelling used in two
different exams and both are very related with the students’ mother tongue, Spanish:
inmediatly and inmediately. In both cases, the prefix imm- has been replaced by inm- due
to the influence of their first language. In Spanish language, there are no words that start
with the particle imm-, instead, there are many terms with inm-: inmediatamente, inmune,
inmóvil, inmoral, inmaduro, inmigrar, etc.

Besides, one of these two misspelled adverbs has the suffix -tly (inmediatly) instead of
-tely (immediately). The relationship between pronunciation and spelling English words
is often a big problem for EFL Spanish learners due to the lack of similarities between

29
how the word must be pronounced and how the word must be written since the connection
between them is not completely consistent: “English spelling and English pronunciation
are hostile and strangers to each other; hostile, because neither accepts without a quarrel
the usage of the other; strangers, because very often one does not recognize the other”
(Khansir and Tajeri, 2015:58). In contrast, as Calvo and Joy (2013) correctly highlight
“Spanish words follow a completely regular system of correspondences between spelling
and pronunciation” (p. 38). This big orthographical and phonological difference in the
English language makes Spanish students tend to commit mistakes, either when writing
or speaking. In this case, knowing that the pronunciation of immediately is, according to
Macmillan Online Dictionary / ɪˈmiːdiətli /, we can deduce that the student wrote the final
suffix basing on its pronunciation, in which we can observe the vowel “e” is not present.
The same happens with the words absolutly (exam 12), whose correct spelling is
absolutely.

With the words suddently and aparently (exam 5), allways (exam 1) and extremelly
(exam 12), the only reason we can find for these two misspellings is that the students' low
level of language did not allow them to write the words correctly, i.e., the mistake is
simply due to lack of knowledge.

Meaning mistakes

It is normal that, when learning a new language, the student mixes up the meaning of
some words, giving them a different sense. That is, the student uses existing and real
words but in inappropriate contexts, causing the incoherence of the sentence, as, for
example, the word used by student number seven, hardly:

95. I tried hardly to call him again. (Exam 7)

The idea of this student was to say that he had tried with great effort to contact the other
person again, calling him persistently. Knowing that the word hardly comes from the
adjective hard, the student supposed that using this adverb he or she would be expressing
the same meaning of the adjective, in a “hard” way. However, the adverb hardly, which
can be considered a synonym of barely or scarcely, means almost the opposite, “(it) has
a negative meaning. It normally means ‘almost not at all’ or ‘only just’” (Cambridge
Online Dictionary). Some adverbs that he or she could have used are persistently,
devotedly or desperately, since they express the student’s idea.

30
3.2.7. Conclusions
To sum up, the description of the frequency of use of adverbs in narrative essays at this
lower-intermediate level is the following.

From a grammatical point of view, there exists a clear quantitative difference between
the four classes since 46,43% of the adverbs used by these students are adjuncts, 35%
subjuncts, 12,86% conjuncts and only 5,71% are disjuncts.

If the analysis is focused on the semantic classification, the most frequently used
semantic class is time with 24,29% of the examples. In contrast, there are two types that
have not been used which are evaluative and viewpoint adverbs. Between these two
points, we have registered from highest to lowest: 20% examples of degree adverbs,
12,86% of linking adverbs, 10 % of focusing, 8,57% of place adverbs, 7,14% of manner
adverbs, 6,14% of frequency adverbs, 5,71% of modal adverbs, and finally, 5% of
duration adverbs.

The morphological division is also unequal: 7,14% are compound adverbs, 30% are
derivational adverbs, and, finally, the morphological class is the one most frequently used,
with 62,86% instances of simple adverbs.

Lastly, as regards the syntactic division, we have registered 40,71% adverbs in initial
position, 32,86% items in end position and 26,43% occurrences in medial position.

3.3. High-Intermediate Exams

3.3.1. General Analysis

Having considered the elements of the lower-level intermediate exams, it will now be
possible to have a comparative study between this last group of exams and the higher-
level intermediate exams of our students from the University of las Palmas de Gran
Canaria. This second group is composed by those students who obtained between 7 and
10 as a final mark in the narrative essays that conform our corpus, which, as already
explained, is a B1 level. As in the previous analysis, this group is also made up of 14
exams, but the marks in this second group range from 7 to 10. As the previous analysis,
each narrative essay will be assigned a number from 1 to 14.

31
 The number of adverbs registered in the sum of these 14 exams is 198, 58 more than
in the previous group. Although new adverbs have been used, many of them are the same
as those already mentioned in the previous analysis. However, the structures created by
our second group of students are more complex and original. This fact makes an adverb
used in both groups seem different in each one due to the difference of structure or
sentence. The adverbs we will work with now are the following, which have been
organized from highest to lowest frequency of use:
Just (20), really (14), suddenly (13), again (10), then (10), absolutely (9), completely (7),
extremely (6), ago (5), finally (5), however (5), very (5), here (4), immediately (4), quickly (4),
there (4), so (4), afterwards (3), furiously (3), later (3), only (3), still (3), yet (3), actually (2),
also (2), already (2), anymore (2), away (2), back (2), meanwhile (2), now (2), nowadays (2),
always, deeply, desperately, easily, even, happily, inside, instantly, luckily, maybe, much,
otherwise, outside, possibly, probably, secretly, slowly, tightly, too, truly, well.

This complexity of clauses and the good use of adverbs within them do not mean that
their classification in the different types of adverbs (grammatically, semantically and
morphologically) and in their different positions (initial, medial, end) is equal. Just as in
the lower-level exams’ division, there are some types of adverbs that are much more
frequently used than others in each classification.

3.3.2. Grammatical functions

From the 198 adverbs registered now im the high-intermediate narrative essays, 86
adjuncts (43,43%), 86 subjuncts (43,43%), 20 conjuncts (10,11%) and only 6 disjuncts
(3,03%). Table 5 presents this analysis with the total number of occurrences in each
category:

Grammatical Adjuncts Subjuncts Disjuncts Conjuncts

classes

Number of 35 19 6 7
adverbs
Occurrences 86 86 6 20
Adverbs Immediately, Absolutely, Luckily, Then,
registered in suddenly, anymore, actually, meanwhile,
the exams tightly, really, possibly, however,
desperately, extremely, finally,
quickly, slowly, completely, otherwise,

32
 again, now, just, only, very, probably, anyways,
then, since, still, so, much, maybe, indeed nevertheless
here, later, too, just, even,
afterwards, yet, already,
aside, ago, deeply, also,
there, furiously, truly
warmly, twice,
back, outside,
alone, inside,
away, safely,
never,
sarcastically,
well, happily,
always,
instantly,
finally, secretly,
nowadays,
easily
Table 5. Frequency of appearance of adverbs according to their grammatical category in
high-intermediate narrative essays

Adjuncts

High level exams follow, to some extent, similar patterns to the previous analysis
since, for instance, the types of adjunct adverbs used by the students of this group are the
same as those studied previously with our first group, namely, time, position and/or
direction and manner adjuncts.

1. Time adjuncts make up 56 adverbs of the total of 86 adjuncts. They are, in turn,
subdivided into time-position, frequency and simply time adjuncts, which are
exactly the same three types of time adjuncts registered in the sample of lower-
intermediate narrative essays.
a) Time-position adjuncts: in the higher-level sample we have registered the
following examples that were also present in the lower-level sample: again,
ago, finally, immediately, later, now and since. However, four new ones have
been identified: afterwards (96), instantly (97), nowadays (98), then:
96. Afterwards, I went back home. (Exam 13)
97. And I instantly wondered if the time had finally come. (Exam 5)
98. Once it was a cheerful and packed with travellers, but, nowadays it Is a foggy
and solitaire place. (Exam 6)

33
 It is important to differentiate the grammatical function of finally and then since
they can act as time adjuncts as in examples 99 and 100 or as conjuncts as in
examples 101 and 102:
99. He then slammed the door behind us. (Exam 14)
100. After all this time, we could finally be free. (Exam 5)
101. Then, I reached my old, abandoned house, it looked absolutely terrible.
(Exam 6)
102. Finally, two minutes later, I knocked the door, extremely confused by all
of that stuff. (Exam 9)
In 101 and 102 (conjuncts) the adverbs are connecting two text elements giving
a chronological order to the writing, being isolated and independent, whereas
in 99 and 100 (adjuncts) the adverbs are not connecting two units but adding
information about time, in other words, they are answering the question
“when?”, which is the function of time adjuncts.
b) Only 3 of the total number of adjuncts registered are frequency adjuncts. One
of them belongs to the occasion frequency subgroup with the definite
frequency group, twice, and the other two adverbs belong to the indefinite
frequency group of adjuncts, never (low frequency), and always (high
frequency).
c) Finally, simple time adjuncts like the adverb suddenly, which was already
explained in section 3.2.2 before, and the new one quickly (103):
103. Quickly, I got out of the house. (Exam 11)
2. Space adjuncts, expressing position and direction, like away, back, here, inside,
outside, there, or only direction, like the adverb aside in example 104, in which
the reader can note that the adjunct is not denoting position like the one used in
105 but just direction:
104. I left aside what I was doing. (Exam 11)
105. We’re also here. (Exam 9)
3. Manner adjuncts, expressing the way something is done. In this group, we could
register a large number of adverbs that had not been used by the lower-level
students: alone, desperately (106), easily, furiously (107), happily, safely,
sarcastically, secretly, tightly, warmly, well:
106. She started to cry desperately. (Exam 8)
107. My heart was beating furiously. (Exam 14)

34
 As regards slowly (108), this is a manner adjunct with temporal duration, since
something is done “in a way that will prolong the time” (Quirk et al., 1985:560),
that is to say, the adverb connects manner with time:

108. We run up the stairs, opened slowly the door and figured out what was
happening…(Exam 8)

Subjuncts

The same four subtypes of subjuncts used by the first group of students have been
registered now within this second group, with the addition of a new one, time subjuncts,
which makes a total of five types of subjuncts:

1. Intensifier subjuncts like absolutely, barely, completely, deeply, extremely, much,

so and very. In this case, all of them are amplifiers intensifiers, excepting barely
which is a downtoner, since it means “not quite” as can be seen in example 109:
109. Why is my ex-boyfriend who I barely have connection with at my aunt’s
with the rest of my family? (Exam 9)
2. Apart from the emphasizer really, which was also registered in the other sample,
there are two new adverbs that emphasize a part of the clause, just (110) and truly
(111):
110. I was at home, reading my new copy “Call me by your name” and enjoying
a cup of boiling hot chocolate, just how I like it. (Exam 12)
111. We were in Helen’s room when suddenly, we heard a truly strange noise.
(Exam 8)
3. In the two samples, we found exactly the same focusing adverbs, with the only
difference that the higher-level students used them less frequently since only 10
focusing subjuncts were registered, five less than in the first analysis in which
there were 15: also (112), even, just (113), only (114), too:
112. “She also <had been awake> all night because of the awful noises she had
heard” (Exam 8). Now the adverb also is focusing our attention to the verb o
the sentence since she also had done something that someone had done
before, to be awake all night.
113. I just <told him> the truth” (Exam 6). The adverb just gives more
importance to the verb “to tell”, making the reader focus the attention on that
part of the clause.

35
 114. “The only <problem> is that we’ll need money’ he whispered to himself”
(Exam 5), the same occurs with this clause in which the adverb only makes
the reader want to know what the problem is since the focusing adverb
indicates that this is the main purpose of the sentence, to explain the problem.
4. We have registered 4 different time-relationship adverbs which have been used
11 times. Two of them have already been studied, already and still, and the other
two have been used for the first time by this second group of students, anymore
and yet. Both adverbs connect the past with the present. In example (115) below,
the generator uses anymore to indicate that something that was happening in the
past is not happening in the present, he or she was angry before but not now.
Something similar occurs in example (116) in which the student uses the adverb
yet to indicate that the girl did not know her brother or sister in the past and still
does not know him or her in the present, so past and present are connected.
115. I’m not angry with Tom anymore. (Exam 7)
116. She had a sister or a brother and she didn’t know him or her yet. (Exam 1)
5. The new type of subjuncts used by high-level intermediate students is time
subjuncts, represented by the adverb just, which apart from being used as an
intensifier or focuser, it can also express time position, as it was already explained:
117. Ana told me that she had just received a letter from him saying goodbye.
(Exam 11)
118. That morning, I was just about to leave home when suddenly my phone
sounded again. (Exam 2)
119. Just as I opened the front door, he whispered ‘You’ll see. Come alone’.
(Exam 14)

The adverb is related to time in the three examples, but not in the same way. In
example 117 the adverb is directly related to the past, expressing the event
happened “recently”. On the contrary, in example 118, the sentence in general
explains an event that took place in the past, but the adverb indicates something
that was going to happen in the near future or “very soon” within that past time,
that is, the adverb is related to the future of the past. Finally, example 119
illustrates the case in which the adverb is expressing that something happened “at
that precise moment”.

36
Disjuncts

Disjuncts adverbs have been the adverbs less frequently used in both groups, perhaps
because the students focus only on narrating the story and not on what they themselves
think about what they write, or what the readers can come to believe from what they read,
which are the two main purposes of this type of adverbs: to express the degree of truth or
the student's judgement of what is said.

Although in the first group of students there was more presence, in this second group
there is more variability. That is to say, low-level intermediate students used 4 different
disjuncts (apparently, basically, maybe and obviously) which were repeated 8 times,
whereas high-level intermediate students have used 6 different content disjuncts that have
been repeated 7 times: actually, indeed, luckily, maybe, possibly and probably. Taking
into account the two types of content disjuncts given by Quirk et al., all of them belong
to degree of truth disjuncts, except luckily which is a value judgement since it indicates
that “what is said is judged to be fortunate” (1985:622):

120. Luckily, I was going to see him soon. (Exam 3)

If degree of truth disjuncts were analysed, they should be divided into three different
groups:

a) Those adverbs that indicate certainty: indeed.

121. He then slammed the door behind us, and at last I saw that there was indeed
something wrong. (Exam 14)
b) Those that indicate some doubt: possibly, probably (122), maybe.
122. Our father has probably been alive the last two decades and we didn’t know it.
(Exam 6)
c) Those with which the generators of clauses assess what they say to be true or false:
actually.
123. It’s been a long time since we don’t see each other. Since his mother kicked me
out of his birthday a year ago, actually. (Exam 5)

Conjuncts

The variability of conjuncts has also increased since high-level intermediate students
have used 5 more adverbs than the students of the first group, which are anyways,

37
however, meanwhile, nevertheless and otherwise. Besides, they used 2 conjuncts that
were also used by low-level intermediate students: finally and then. These 8 items
represent five types of conjuncts adverbs:

a) Listing conjuncts, to give order to the text: finally, then (124).

124. Then, I reached my old, abandoned house, it looked absolutely terrible.
(Exam 6)
b) Inferential conjuncts help to give a conclusion based on “logic and supposition”
(Quirk et al., 1985: 638): otherwise.
125. I hope Tom don’t do that again, otherwise Helen will get mad in that huge
house. (Exam 8)
c) Contrastive conjuncts, with which the speaker or writer can express an opposition
between two ideas: anyways, however (126), nevertheless.
126. At first, I wasn’t going to answer it. However, when I heard his voice, I
felt my heart beating twice as fast, and my mouth went dry. (Exam 12)
d) Transitional conjuncts change the main topic or focus of the narration, they seek
to “indicate a move away from the normal sequence in narrative” (Quirk et al.,
1985: 640): meanwhile.
127. That sweet girl didn’t stop looking at me. Meanwhile, I thought about who
was her. (Exam 1)

3.3.3. Semantical analysis

The following table shows the adverbs that have been used by high-intermediate
students classified in their semantical categories and with the number of times they have
been used:

Semantic roles and Number Occurrences Adverbs registered in the exams

number of times used of
adverbs
Manner 13 16 Furiously, quickly, well,
happily, secretly, easily,
tightly, desperately, slowly,
warmly, alone, safely,
sarcastically.

38
 Place 7 14 Here, there, aside, away,
inside, back, outside.
Time 13 71 Immediately, suddenly, then,
again, afterwards, just, later,
now, ago, finally, instantly,
nowadays, since.
Duration 4 9 Still, already, yet, anymore.
Frequency 3 3 Always, never, twice.
Degree 10 49 Absolutely, completely,
extremely, very, really, so,
much, deeply, truly, barely.
Focusing 5 10 Only, just, also, even, too.
Modal 5 6 Indeed, probably, possibly,
maybe, actually.
Evaluative

Viewpoint

Linking 7 20 Then, finally, however,

anyways, otherwise,
nevertheless, meanwhile.
Table 6. Classification of adverbs from a semantic point of view (high-intermediate level)

Comparing the semantic results of both groups, they follow almost the same order of
frequency. For instance, they both have time adverbs as the most frequently used adverbs,
followed by degree adverbs and, thirdly, linking adverbs. From this point, the order in the
groups varies slightly as we can appreciate in the following table in which a comparison
between the frequency order of the semantical types of adverbs of both groups is given:

Low-level exams' frequency order High-level exams' frequency order

1. Time adverbs (24,29%)
2. Degree adverbs (20%)
3. Linking adverbs (12,86 %)
4. Focusing adverbs (10 %)
5. Place adverbs (8,57%)
6. Manner adverbs (7,14%)
7. Frequency adverbs (6,43%)
1. Time adverbs (35,86%)
2. Degree adverbs (24,75%)
3. Linking adverbs (10,10%)
4. Manner adverbs (8,08%)
5. Place adverbs (7,07%)
6. Focusing adverbs (5,05%)
7. Duration adverbs (4,55%)

39
 8. Modal adverbs (5,71%) 8. Modal adverbs (2,52%)
9. Duration adverbs (5%) 9. Frequency adverbs (2,02%)
10. Viewpoint and evaluative adverbs 10. Viewpoint and evaluative adverbs
(0%) (0%)
Table 7. Comparison of frequency order of the semantic types of adverbs in the two
samples

3.3.4. Syntactic analysis

There have been many changes in this part of the analysis. Adverbs that have been
used in certain positions in the first group are now placed in different position in this
group. Although, as already explained before, there are adverbs that change their roles or
effects within the clauses by only changing their positions, there are also others that
always have the same meaning, intention or effect independently of the positions the
generator has given to them, as we can see in the three examples below, in which different
students have used the adverb immediately in different positions:

128. He immediately left. (Exam 5 of low-level intermediate students)

129. Immediately, I felt someone behind me. (Exam 10 high-level intermediate
students)
130. I had to seat immediately. (Exam 12 high-level intermediate students)

This second group of students have preferred different positions from those chosen by
lower-level students. The most frequently adverb position used by our first group was the
initial one, whereas in the higher-level group it is the end position with 76 adverbs:

131. We run to his room, grabbed him by the arms and hugged him warmly. (Exam
11)
132. After that my day changed completely. (Exam 1)

Followed by medial position with 65 adverbs:

133. I was really annoyed. (Exam 2)

134. Finally, she told me she was very worried, because Tom, her cat, had disappeared.
(Exam 8)

And, finally, the initial position, which was the position most frequently used by lower-
level students, is now the least recurrent position, with 57 adverbs:

40
 135. Nowadays, Carlos and Tom are very good friends. (Exam 7)
136. Afterwards, I took her to a extremely enormous restaurant. (Exam 10)
3.3.5. Morphological analysis

Both groups have compound adverbs as the least frequently used type of adverbs. Only
8 different adverbs of the 198 registered from the high-level exams are compound, which
are used 16 times. However, there is a contrast between the two types of morphological
adverbs most frequently used within each group, since in our analysis of lower-level
students, simple adverbs were placed in the first position with 88 adverbs out of 140,
whereas in the higher-level group this first place is occupied by derivational adverbs, with
5 instances. The second type of adverbs most often used is the last one, simple adverbs,
of which there are 87 occurrences.

Morphological Simple Compound Derivational

classes
Number of 23 8 26
adverbs
Occurrences 87 16 95
Adverbs Again, ago, Anymore, inside, Absolutely, actually,
registered in alone, also, however, maybe, afterwards, always,
the exams away, back, meanwhile, already, completely,
even, here, nowadays, deeply, desperately, easily,
indeed, just, otherwise, outside. extremely, finally,
never, now, furiously, happily,
only, since, so, immediately, instantly,
still, then, there, later, luckily, possibly,
too, twice, very, probably, quickly, really,
well, yet. secretly, slowly, suddenly,
tightly, truly.
Table 8. Classification of adverbs from a morphological point of view (high-intermediate
level)

3.3.6. Notable mistakes

Although this second group of students has the highest level in the class, they also
made some mistakes that should be mentioned.

41
Misspelling

Unlike the 7 misspelled adverbs found in the previous group, only 3 misspelled
adverbs have been found in this second group: absolutly (Exam 6), nowdays (Exam 7),
inmediately (Exam 13). These 3 instances do not even reach 2% of the total number of
adverbs, so there is very little misspelling in adverbs. However, like in the first group,
they are common words which should be totally controlled, especially, in this high-level
intermediate group.

Wrong Words

There are two cases of wrong adverbs used in high-level exams with different types of
mistakes each one. Example 137 belongs to exam 3 which has obtained a 7 as a final
mark. In this case the student should have used the adjective happy to modify the noun
“moments” instead of using the adverb happily, since it creates an illogical sentence. In
example 138, the adverb used by the student does not have the function the writer was
looking for, since completely is an amplifier adverb whose function is to increase the
degree of something, in other words, according to Cambridge Online Dictionary,
completely means “in every way or as much as possible”, and an “autumn day” cannot be
more or less autumn day or higher or lower autumn day.

137.Tom, one of my best Friends since I was a child, with whom I have saved a lot of
happily moments. (Exam 3)
138.It was a completely autumn day. (Exam 10)

Overuse

Finally, there is a high-level intermediate exam in which an overuse of adverbs has been
noted, and this is something students have to be careful with, since the frequent use of
some types of words, either adverbs or verbs, or any other type of linguistic element does
not imply a higher level of the language; on the contrary, this fact can create a superficial
narration that makes the text not sound natural like that given by the student of exam 10,
in which there is an overuse of adjectives and adverbs:

139. I was just about to go to find her when suddenly, she told me that she was
starving. Afterwards I took her to a extremely enormous restaurant. Meanwhile, she
was eating, and I was watching her really delightful smile. (Exam 10)

42
However, this situation is quite common in EFL students, since, they usually want to
show all their knowledge of the language in the writing skill, regardless of the length of
the text required by the teachers, nor the subject, or the objective of the writing activity;
what really matters to them is writing all the possible words to look like specialists in the
language. The same situation used to happen to Costa, who, in his Linking Adverbials in
Applied Linguistics Research Articles: A Corpus-Based Study, explains his experience.
He explains that he used to be surprised by the use of words that he had never seen before
in native speakers texts, he memorized them and then wrote them down in his academic
writings in order to get more professional texts, but instead of that, he made them “rather
broken”. This was because, as he explains (2015):
As many inexperienced writers, I was overusing linking adverbials in order that
the text could look like those written by mature professional writers. […] Both
overuse and underuse of linking adverbials negatively impact on the overall
comprehension of a text. (p. 20)

3.3.7. Conclusions
To summarize, the following paragraphs will describe the frequency of use of adverbs
in narrative essays at higher-intermediate level.

If we focus on the grammatical division, adjuncts and subjuncts occupy the first place
in terms of frequency of occurrence, reaching both, curiously, the same percentage of
43,43%, with the same number of adverbs, followed by conjuncts with a 10,11% of the
occurrences and, finally, disjuncts with 3,03%. As it can be appreciated, the difference of
frequency between the first two, adjuncts and subjuncts, and disjuncts is really big. This
difference is also found in the semantic frequency division of adverbs in which there is a
considerable contrast between time adverbs, which are the most frequently used with
35,86% of the total number of adverbs, and evaluative and viewpoint adverbs of which
there are no instances. Consecutively, time adverbs are followed by degree adverbs with
24,75%, linking adverbs with 10,10%, manner adverbs with 8,08%, place adverbs with
7,07%, focusing adverbs with 5,05%, duration adverbs with 4,55%, modal adverbs with
2,52%, and frequency adverbs with 2,02%.

Regarding the morphological division, the analysis of the adverbs in the low-
intermediate texts showed simple adverbs were more common, followed by derivational
adverbs and finally by compound adverbs. In the higher-level narrative essays, in contrast,

43
derivational adverbs occupy the first place with 47,98% of the examples, followed by
simple adverbs with 43,94% and, finally, compound adverbs with 8,08%. Although there
is almost the same number of derivational and simple adverbs, there is an important
contrast between derivational and compound adverbs, between which there is a difference
of almost 80 words.

Finally, the syntactic analysis shows that the division of adverbs in terms of their
position is the most balanced of the four analysis, since there are 38,38% of adverbs
occupying the end position, 32,83% adverbs in medial position and 28,79% adverbs in
initial position.

4. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

In figure 2 we present a general summary of the frequency of adverbs both in the group
constituted by lower-intermediate level exams and in the higher-level exams and as
regards the four analyses that we have carried out in terms of the grammatical, semantic,
morphological and syntactic classification of adverbs. The results allow us to draw two
important conclusions in this research: what type of adverb has been the most and least
frequently used in each of the four analyses and the difference in the frequency of use of
adverbs between both groups, that is to say, does the difference in levels between students
automatically imply the difference in the use of adverbs?

44
 Frequency of Adverbs
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

ng

d
Fre ion
ce

t
g

al

l
Sub cts

er

Vie tive

mp le
Foc e

d
Dis cts

cy

Eva dal
Ma s

ial
Co cts

Du e

dia
oin
nct

kin
gre

un

En
on
Tim

p
nn

en
Pla

Init
usi
jun
jun

Mo

Sim
rat
jun

Me
lua

o
wp
Lin
nju

ati
De
qu
Ad

riv
Co
De
Grammatical Analysis in Low Level Exams Grammatical Analysis in High Level Exams
Semantical Analysis in Low Level Exams Semantical Analysis in High Level Exams
Morphological Analysis in Low Level Exams Morphological Analysis in High Level Exams
Syntactical Analysis in Low Level Exams Syntactical Analysis in High Level Exams

Figure 2. Graphic of frequency of adverbs of both groups

If a combination of the results of both groups was made, we would find that the least
frequently used adverbs of each type of analysis are disjuncts (grammatically), evaluative
and viewpoint (semantically), compound (morphologically) and medial adverbs
(syntactically). On the contrary, the adverbs most frequently used are adjuncts
(grammatically), time (semantically), simple (morphologically), initial and end adverbs
(syntactically). It can also be seen in the above graph that high-level students’ columns
are normally longer than the low-level students’ ones, that is to say, the students who
present a higher level of the language have written more adverbs. Therefore, the higher
the language level, the more adverbs will be used. Obviously, if EFL students have more
knowledge of the language, they will know and therefore use more vocabulary. This can
not only happen with adverbs but also with any other grammatical element. If this
research was based on verbs or nouns, probably those students who have achieved higher
marks would also have used a larger number or greater variability of verbs or nouns.

Besides, students’ self-confidence has a very important role in the realization of any
type of language exam. Mardiansyah, a teacher of English at Junior High School 44

45
Palembang, made a research in which he tried to show the relationship that there exists
between students’ self-confidence and their essay writing achievement. First, he gave
students a test of different personal questions which evaluated students’ confidence, and
then the same students should do an essay. He proved that those students who
demonstrated a high self-confidence through the test were the same students who got the
highest marks in the essay. According to Mardiansyah (2018):

Students who had low self-confidence were feeling shy and fear making mistake,
they only wrote what they could write by using their vocabulary and then they
just kept silent because they were afraid of making mistake (p. 163).

In contrast, confident students believed in their capacities, were not nervous doing this
type of essays, were motivated and besides, they were ready to take risks and to share
their opinions (Mardiansyah 2018:163-164). In short, “students who are highly self-
confident in learning English especially in writing usually have higher writing
achievement compare to those who are low or negative self-confidence” (Mardiansyah
2018:164).

Therefore, one of the most important elements in the process of teaching a new
language is the security that each student has. It is really important to make students feel
comfortable, confident and in an environment that allows them to develop their
confidence, so that they can demonstrate all their knowledge without feeling unable to do
it correctly. Low-level students' lack of confidence leads them to believe that they cannot
use some types of words or structures and due to this fact, they tend to avoid them.

If, in addition to these last two results, we added up the total number of registered
adverbs in the sum of 28 exams analysed we would have a total of 338 registered adverbs,
198 from high-level exams and 140 from low-level exams. These numbers give us an
average of 14 and 10 adverbs, respectively, per exam. Taking into account that the writing
they did should contain between 200 and 250 words, we can come to the conclusion that
the use of adverbs by first-year EFL ULPGC students is not so considerable.

This lack of adverbs can be related to three important factors. Firstly, we are dealing
with B1 learners, which means, they have an intermediate level in which, obviously, many
structures and words are totally unknown for them. Secondly, when L2 students begin to
study this language, the first thing they learn is the basic syntactic order of English:
subject – verb – complement. This order is always present throughout the study of English

46
language, so when students have to do an essay, they normally tend to write the obligatory
subject, the obligatory verb and finally, the complement. It is like their comfort zone or
basic structure with which it is more difficult to make mistakes; leaving this zone is a risk
for them. This second factor drives us to the third and last one, already mentioned at the
beginning of this work, the students’ preoccupation for being accurate rather that original,
in other words, the risk-avoidance strategy: “Complexity and accuracy are two competing
goals for L2 learners” (Manchon 2009: 134). In this university context, one of the main
objectives of students is to pass the exam. Besides, according to Ulusan (2018), university
students tend to use more strategies since their young adult mentality allows them to have
more sophisticated thoughts and ideas in order to get higher scores, and, as a result, they
have more astuteness and abilities than younger learners (p. 40).

This simplicity will always be present in this type of writing in which the level of the
students is not very high and will basically determine the future of the students with the
final mark. Students' priority will always be to pass the exam unless the evaluation system
changes and gives more importance to originality, since the main objective of learning
this language is to communicate through it. Ulusan (2018) makes a proposal in his
research based on the idea that students should have more freedom in their exams, and
the only way to achieve this is by downplaying the precision and perfection of students’
writings:

This fact […] urges us to re-evaluate our evaluation system and create a new
system which focuses mostly on content rather than accuracy and which
promotes creativity, and in turn, which encourages the learners to take risks and
try to verbalize whatever ideas they conceive, disregarding the fact that they
might make errors. (p. 43)

The risk-avoidance strategy can also be appreciated in the absence of mistakes in the
use of adverbs by both groups. From the 140 words used by the first group, only 11
mistakes were registered and from the 198 adverbs written by the second group, only 5
mistakes have been found. In addition to the fact that students have correctly used the
adverbs learned in class, since almost all the adverbs that have been used are those that
are taught in level B1, this absence of mistakes reinforces the idea that students have
preferred to use familiar words, avoiding risks and mistakes. Ulusan’s theories can be
present here as well since she defends that it can be really difficult to learn something that
is continually avoided in order not to make it wrongly. If a student does not use certain

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types of words for fear of being wrong, these words will never be used and, therefore,
they will not be corrected and learnt.

Corder (1967) emphasizes the idea that mistakes are important in the course of learning
a new language because of three reasons. First, they inform teachers about how students
are progressing and what things must be reinforced or learnt. Second, they provide the
researcher with information about how students learn or acquire the language and what
methods or techniques they use. Thirdly, they can be considered necessary for the student,
because they can use mistakes as a powerful tool to learn the language (Corder, 1967:
167).

All things considered, it is necessary to remember the importance of adverbs in the

communication of not only English, but of any language. These words have helped the
students to better convey the ideas they had in mind and to narrate the stories with
coherence and understanding, which in turn has made it easier for the reader to understand
what they are reading.

It is amazing how a single word can have so much impact on a structure or phrase and
how each grammatical element, be it either an adverb, a verb, or a noun, has its own form
of use or "theory". This means that the important thing is not only to know the meaning
of a word but, when that word must be used, in what position and with which grammatical
element it must be accompanied. As we saw before, an adverb can change its function
depending on the position that the writer has given it, or even an adverb can stop being
an adverb depending on the use of it, like for example, since:

- As a preposition (followed by a noun): Everything has changed so much since last

spring.
- As an adverb (without a following noun): She left home in 1993 and hasn’t been
seen since.
- As a conjunction (connecting two clauses): Paul’s had several different jobs since
he left school. Since there’s no more business, we can all go home.
(Macmillan Online Dictionary)

In conclusion, in this dissertation we have provided a brief account of the semantic,

syntactic, morphological and positional behaviour of adverbs following Quirk et al.’s
descriptions (1985). We have also described each type of adverb used by the two groups
of students, as well as the frequency of adverbs of each group and then, we have made a

48
comparative analysis in which the differences between both groups could be shown and
observed. Furthermore, all mistakes made by students have been mentioned and analysed,
providing personal conclusions about what could have been the reasons why such
mistakes have been made.

An EFL student never gets to know a language completely, L2 learners will always be
in constant learning, with words they have never heard before or with structures or
expressions that can mean things they could never guess or imagine. However, the
important thing is to value and save each new learning without forgetting the simplest,
most basic and necessary things in each language. Like vowels. Like adverbs.

49
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