Adjective & Adverb Phrases

Adjective Phrases are prepositional or participial phrases used as adjectives in a sentence. 

We are focussing on prepositional phrases right now.  A prepositional phrases consists of the preposition plus its object.

Adverb phrases are prepositional phrases that modify the verb.

The test on The Old Man and the Sea was not very difficult.

On is the preposition; The Old Man and the Sea is its object.  Together they form a prepositional phrase that tells us which test we are talking about.  In other words, the phrase modifies the noun "test" and so it is an adjective phrase.

The test we took on Tuesday was not very difficult.

In this sentence, "on Tuesday" is a prepositional phrase, but this time, it does not modify a noun.  Here the phrase tells when we took the test. In other words, it modifies the verb "took" and so it is an adverb phrase.

Here are some resources and  activities to help you understand and test yourself on prepositional phrases:

A"quiz" activity on our Quia page that takes you step by step through identifying prepositions and phrases.

A Basic level activity fro Houghton Mifflin to help you learn to identify prepositons and adjective phrases.

A page from Your Dictionary.com that shows you how to identify adjective phrases (no exercise).

An online practice identifying adjective and adverb phrases from Pearson.