Order of adjectives

## Level and focus

**Level:** A2  
**Category:** Adjectives

Put common adjectives in a natural order before nouns.

By the end of this lesson, learners should be able to: **Recognise and use a basic adjective order in short noun phrases.**

## Core idea

This lesson adds a recommended grammar point that improves the coverage of the curriculum without changing the overall CEFR progression. Learners should first recognise the pattern, then practise controlled examples, and only later combine it with adjacent grammar.

## Form

- `opinion before fact: a nice small room`

• size/age/colour before noun: a small old red car

• do not add plural -s to adjectives

  Meaning and use

  Use this grammar when the speaker needs the meaning described in the lesson goal. The examples should stay close to the level and should not rely on advanced vocabulary or several new grammar points at once.

  Examples

  • It is a beautiful old house.

• She bought a small black bag.

• They live in a nice modern flat.

• He has two big brown dogs.

  Common mistakes

  • Putting factual adjectives before opinion adjectives: not an old beautiful house; use a beautiful old house.

• Adding plural -s to adjectives: not two blacks bags; use two black bags.

• Putting adjectives after the noun in ordinary English: not a bag black; use a black bag.

  Teaching sequence

  1. Start with a clear contrast between two forms or meanings.
  2. Give short controlled examples with familiar vocabulary.
  3. Include one item that targets a common mistake.
  4. Add mixed review items that distinguish this point from a neighbouring lesson.
  5. End with simple sentence-level production or recognition.

  Boundary: what not to cover here

  Keep this as practical order of frequent adjectives. Do not add dense C2 noun phrase compression.

  Suggested practice

  For the current exercise system, use 25 multiple-choice exercises. Include clear distractors that test the target grammar, not obscure vocabulary. Later, this lesson can be expanded with gap-fill, error-correction or transformation tasks.

Quick check

Before you move on, can you explain the rule in one sentence and make one example of your own?