Inversion: negative adverbials — The Stoic Prescription
Grammar: Inversion
Free ESL grammar exercise on inversion: negative adverbials themed around the stoic prescription. Printable worksheet from EnglishPlans.com.
What's on this worksheet
A Level 6 (proficiency) ESL grammar exercise on psychology, practising inversion. The worksheet has a short reading excerpt, a grammar reference and graded practice items.
From the reading
Seldom does a philosophical system so deliberately strip the good life of everything a modern audience would consider its preconditions. Only by internalising this asymmetry completely can a person achieve genuine equanimity. Never did Marcus Aurelius pretend the discipline was comfortable — rarely has ancient philosophy mapped so precisely onto a modern empirical framework.
Grammar: Inversion
- Inversion: negative
- Never did he pretend the discipline was easy. — fronted negative adverbial + auxiliary + subject
- Inversion
- Seldom does a system strip the good life so completely. — use do/does/did when no other auxiliary is present
Sample items
- ______ a philosopher demanded so much from ordinary human attention as Epictetus.
- ______ we understand how completely the Stoics redefined the meaning of loss.
- ______ can genuine equanimity be reached through passive acceptance of circumstance.
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