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Unit 1: English In A Minute
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Session 69

Welcome to English In A Minute. Give us a minute and we'll give you a hot tip about English. Grammar, vocabulary... there's so much to learn! And all taught by your favourite BBC Learning English presenter!

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Session 69 score

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    Activity 1
  1. Activity 1

Activity 1

Hard vs Hardly

Do you have a minute to spare to learn some English? Phil's hardly found it hard at all to explain hard vs hardly to you! Give us 60 seconds and we'll give you the English!

Watch the video and complete the activity

Show transcriptHide transcript

Phil
Hi, I'm Phil and I'm going to tell you about the difference between hard and hardly.

Hard we can use in lots of different ways but it usually means 'strong', 'difficult' or 'intense':
Ow! That ball's hard!
Calculus is hard!
That was really hard work.

Hardly is an adverb and it can mean 'almost not'. This is too small. I can hardly read it.

We can use it with 'any' to talk about quantity. For example: There's hardly any water in this cup.

We can use it with 'ever' for frequency. For example: I hardly ever play basketball.

To help you remember:

It's hard for me to play tennis because I hardly ever train. I can hardly walk afterwards because I've been running hard. And I often get hurt because the ball's hard, and there's hardly any time to get out of the way!

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EIAM Teaser 6minvocab_li_2_adjectives_adverbs.jpg 6mingram_15_adverb_position_verbs.jpg______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hard and Hardly

Hard
Hard can be used in many different ways but it usually means 'strong', 'difficult' or 'intense'. Here, hard is an adjective and describes a noun. 

  • Ow! That ball is hard!
  • Calculus is hard!
  • That was really hard work.

Hardly
Hardly is an adverb. It can mean 'almost not'. We can use it with 'any' to talk about quantity - hardly any. It can also be used with 'ever' as an adverb of frequency - hardly ever.

  • This is too small. I can hardly read it.
  • There's hardly any water in this cup.
  • I hardly ever play basketball.

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