Video

Click here to read the subtitles

Text

COMPARATIVE AND SUPERLATIVE ADJECTIVES

Is a mobile pone as useful as a tablet? Which is the most expensive game console? Are you smarter than your friends when shopping?

If you can answer these questions, you have already begun to learn how to use the comparative and superlative forms. Let’s have a look!

You want to describe the phone and the tablet by comparing size (big/small), price (cheap/expensive) and use (useful).

Pay attention to this mini dialogue: 

“I think a mobile phone is as useful as a tablet.

“Yes! And the tablet can be as cheap as a mobile phone”.

You use AS… AS… to express a similarity in the comparison: the phone and the tablet are equally useful and their prices can be similar.

Now, have a look at this dialogue:

“Which is more expensive, a mobile phone or a tablet?”

“A phone can be more expensive than a tablet, but it is smaller, so it is more useful.

When you want to express that something or somebody has a quality in a superior level, you need to add -ER (SMALLER) to short adjectives or use MORE before a long adjective (MORE EXPENSIVE).

But how can we express that something or somebody has a quality in its top level? Pay attention to the next conversation.

When you want to express a quality in its top level, you add -EST to short adjectives (THE BIGGEST) and use THE MOST before long adjectives (THE MOST EXPENSIVE). This is called superlative form.

“I’ve bought the biggest mobile phone in the shop”

“Have you? Then it must be the most expensive too”.

SPELLING RULES

Adjectives ending in Y change it for I: EASY, EASIER, THE EASIEST

Adjectives ending in consonant plus vowel plus consonant, double the last consonant: BIG, BIGGER, THE BIGGEST.

Watch out! There are three irregular adjectives, so you have to memorise them:

GOOD, BETTER (comparative), BEST (superlative)

BAD, WORSE (comparative), WORST (superlative)

FAR, FURTHER (comparative), FURTHEST (superlative)

TO SUM UP:

To use comparative adjectives:

You add -ER to short adjective.

Use MORE before long adjectives.

Remember to write THAN before the second term of the comparison.

To use superlative adjectives:

We add -EST to short adjectives: the smallest

We write MOST before long adjectives: the most expensive

Remember to write THE before the superlative structure.

Now, you are closer to create a great publicity campaign.

Image