Circle the nouns in a sentence. A noun is a person, place or object. In the sentence, "Tom really wants a blue car," "Tom" and "car" are nouns.
Underline the sentence's words that describe the nouns you circled. Those description words are adjectives. They describe nouns by answering any of these questions: What kind? How many? Which one? In the sentence, "Tom really wants a blue car," "blue" describes the noun "car" by answering the question, "What kind of car?"
Search for more than one adjective that describe one noun. Sometimes a noun is described by more than one adjective. If the sentence, "Tom really wants an old blue car," both "old" and "blue" describe the noun "car." The noun "Tom," however, is not modified by an adjective.
Examine your sentence for words that describe verbs, adjectives, adverbs or clauses. Verbs are action words, adjectives describe nouns and adverbs describe verbs, adjectives, other adverbs and clauses. An adverb answers how, when, where or why regarding its subject. In the sentence, "Tom really wants a blue car," the only adverb is "really," and it answers the question, "How does Tom want the car?"
Identify a sentence's words with "ly," such as "really," "simply" and "blankly." Adverbs often end in ly, but not all ly words are adverbs, including "lonely" and "lovely," which are adjectives. Words ending in ly that modify verbs, adjectives or adverbs are adverbs.
Look for time modifiers, such as "sometimes," "often" and "rarely," that describe a verb, adjective or adverb. In the sentence, "Tom sometimes wants a blue car," the word "sometimes" is an adverb that describes how often Tom wants a blue car.