1 a The adjectives in the text are: foreign (x2), long (x2), complicated, young (x2), technical, ultimate, likely, better, sound, meaningful (x2), appropriate, formal (x2), explicit, older, able, good, learning-centred, interesting, active, capable. Surrounded is a past participle in a passive construction. Note, also, that able is sometimes classed as part of the phrasal modal be able to.

Note that words like learner, in young learner classrooms, and grammar, in grammar teaching, are like adjectives, in the sense that they qualify the nouns that follow them, but they are in fact nouns. As we will see, they do not pass the ‘adjective test’.

b Common adjectival suffixes represented here are: -al, -ate, -ful, -ive, and -able. The participle endings -ed and -ing are also very common. Other common adjectival endings are: -ic, -ish, -less, -like, -y.

c learning-centred is a compound adjective.

d Comparative adjectives in the text are: better, older, more formal.

e Both complicated and interesting are formed from participles – the past participle and the present participle respectively: -centred (in learning-centred) is also derived from the participle of the verb to centre.

f All the adjectives are attributive in this text apart from likely, better, appropriate, older, able, meaningful and interesting, capable. Note that some adjectives, like ultimate, can only be used attributively: their ultimate success, but not their success was ultimate. Other adjectives that have similar restrictions are: utter, outright, former, main, while others are only used predicatively: unwell, alone, asleep, ready.

g Adverb – adjective combinations are: conceptually appropriate and increasingly able.

h Ultimate is ungradable: something is not normally very ultimate, or more ultimate. Foreign is normally ungradable: a language is either foreign or not, but it can occasionally be used in a gradable sense: his accent sounded extremely foreign.

i An adjective with a dependent preposition is capable of. Able is followed by a to-infinitive, not strictly a preposition.

j There are three adverbs in the text that derive from adjectives: luckily (from lucky) conceptually (from conceptual), and increasingly (from increasing, which in turn originated as a present participle).

2 Note that only one of the above words passes all five adjective ‘tests’. Both their and grammar, although sharing the meaning attributes of adjectives in that they modify nouns, do not qualify as adjectives on formal grounds, their being better classed as a determiner and grammar as a noun.