Excited or exciting? -ed and -ing adjectives
Many adjectives have two forms. The -ed form tells us how a person feels: I am bored. The -ing form tells us what a thing, an event or a person is like: The film is boring. Look at these pairs: excited / exciting, interested / interesting, surprised / surprising and tired / tiring. If the match was exciting, the fans were excited. If the lesson was interesting, we were interested. Ask yourself: Is the word about a person’s feeling, or about the thing that causes it?
| Feeling (-ed) | Thing (-ing) |
|---|---|
| I am excited. | The game is exciting. |
| She is interested. | The book is interesting. |
| He is bored. | The film is boring. |
| We are surprised. | The news is surprising. |
| They are tired. | The walk is tiring. |
The show about space was really interesting!
I was very surprised when the presenter showed a real rock from the moon.
I was excited, but I was tired at the end. It was a long day.
Yes, it was tiring, but I was never bored.
Last Friday our class went to the zoo. The trip was exciting, and we were all excited in the bus. The monkeys were funny, and we were very interested in the baby giraffe. The walk around the zoo was tiring, so Adel was tired and sat on a bench. The long queue at the gate was boring, and Mona was bored. But everybody was happy at the end.
Two faces. The child draws two faces on paper: one bored face and one excited face. The grown-up says a sentence, for example: The match was exciting. The child holds up the right face and says: I was excited. Then change places.