Learn Hardcore Chinese: Tā píngshí zài xuéxiào yě chángcháng juéde hěn lèi. - She usually also often feels very tired at school.

平时 = “in normal times / in her everyday life / usually (as a background)”
- It behaves like a time expression: it sets the general situation.
- Think “as a rule / normally, when it’s just a regular day…”.
常常 = “often / frequently”
- It is a frequency adverb that directly modifies the verb 觉得.

So the structure is basically:

她 (she)
平时 (in general, in her usual routine)
在学校 (at school)
也常常觉得 (also often feels)
很累 (very tired / tired)

If you remove one:

Without 平时: 她在学校也常常觉得很累。
- Focus = “At school, she often feels very tired.” (no explicit contrast with “special occasions”)
Without 常常: 她平时在学校也觉得很累。
- Focus = “In general, when she’s at school, she feels very tired.” (habitual, but less explicit about how often)

Having both makes it clear that:

in her normal life (平时),
at school (在学校),
she frequently (常常) feels tired.

What exactly does 平时 mean, and where can it go in the sentence?

平时 (píngshí) literally means “ordinary times / normal days”. In usage it means:

as a time setting: “normally, in general, on ordinary days”
It’s similar to “usually / normally” in English, but often contrasts with “special occasions” (holidays, exams, trips, etc.).

Position: time words usually come right after the subject:

她平时在学校也常常觉得很累。 ✅ (very natural)
平时她在学校也常常觉得很累。 ✅ (also fine; emphasizes “as for normally…”)

You can move it around a bit, but it will sound less standard or change the focus:

她在学校平时也常常觉得很累。 – understandable, but the rhythm is a bit awkward. Most teachers wouldn’t teach this as the default.

Safe rule:
> Subject + time (like 平时) + place (like 在学校) + other adverbs + verb…

Why do we need 在 before 学校? Could we just say 她平时学校也常常觉得很累?

You need 在 here.

在 is a preposition meaning “at / in / on” when used before a place.
学校 by itself is just a noun “school”. To say “at school”, you use 在学校.

So:

在学校 = “at school” ✅
学校 alone = “school (as a thing)” ❌ (not correct for “at school” in this sentence)

The typical pattern in Mandarin is:

Subject + 在 + place + Verb
她在学校觉得很累。 = “She feels very tired at school.”

Leaving out 在 here makes the sentence ungrammatical.

What does 也 do here? Can we just drop it?

也 (yě) means “also / too”, and it adds the idea of addition or comparison.

In 她平时在学校也常常觉得很累。 it suggests:

In some other situation (for example at home, or this has been mentioned earlier), she is tired;
at school she also often feels tired – that is another place where she feels tired.

If you drop 也:

她平时在学校常常觉得很累。
- Meaning: “She often feels very tired at school (in general).”
- You lose the explicit “also / too” comparison with some other context.

So:

Grammatically, you can drop 也.
But with 也, the sentence ties into some unstated comparison: she’s not only tired elsewhere, she’s tired at school too.

Why is it 也常常 together? Could we say 常常也觉得 or 也觉得常常很累 instead?

In Chinese, multiple adverbs usually go in front of the main verb in a fairly fixed order.

Here, the main verb is 觉得, and we have two adverbs:

也 – “also” (scope adverb, applies to the whole predicate)
常常 – “often” (frequency adverb, applies directly to the verb)

The natural stacking is:

也 + 常常 + 觉得

So:

她平时在学校也常常觉得很累。 ✅ natural

Other orders:

她平时在学校常常也觉得很累。
- Understandable, but sounds less smooth; it may sound like you are slightly emphasizing 也 (“she also feels very tired a lot”).
她平时在学校也觉得常常很累。
- Awkward. It starts to sound like 常常 is modifying 很累 instead of 觉得, which is not how native speakers usually say it.

Rule of thumb:
> Put scope adverbs like 也 before frequency adverbs like 常常, and both before the verb.

Does 很累 here really mean “very tired”, or just “tired”? Why do we need 很?

In this sentence, 很 is mostly a “grammatical 很”, not necessarily strong “very”.

In Mandarin, many adjectives behave like stative verbs. Saying just:

她很累。 is the normal way to say “She is tired.”
她累。 often sounds:
- like a contrast (“she is the one who’s tired (not someone else)”), or
- like a description in a special context (e.g., a comment in a list: “tall, short, tired…”).

So in neutral statements, Chinese often inserts 很 before an adjective:

很累, 很高, 很忙 etc.

In this sentence, 很 can be understood in two ways:

As a neutral linking adverb: “is tired” (not strongly emphasizing degree).
As actually “very”: “she often feels very tired”.

Context (tone, emphasis) decides how strong it feels, but grammatically 很 is very natural and almost required in a sentence like this.

What is the nuance of 觉得 here? How is it different from 认为, 感到, or 感觉?

All of these can relate to “feeling / thinking”, but their usage is different:

觉得 (juéde)
- Very common and neutral.
- Means both “to feel” (subjectively) and “to think / have the impression”.
- Works perfectly with physical or emotional states:
  - 觉得很累, 觉得很开心, 觉得很冷.
认为 (rènwéi)
- More like “to consider / to hold the opinion that”, often used for reasoned opinions, not physical tiredness.
- 她认为很累。 sounds wrong unless you add an object like
  - 她认为这件事很累人。 (“She considers this task tiring.”)
感到 (gǎndào)
- More formal, often in writing.
- Can replace 觉得 in many cases:
  - 她感到很累。 (She feels very tired.)
感觉 (gǎnjué)
- As a verb: similar to 觉得, but a bit more “sensory” or “intuitive”.
  - 她感觉很累。 – acceptable, but 觉得 is more colloquial here.
- As a noun: “feeling”:
  - 一种很累的感觉 – “a very tired feeling”.

In everyday spoken Mandarin about being tired, 觉得很累 is the most natural and common.

Why is there no 了 in this sentence? Shouldn’t “felt tired” take 了?

了 often marks:

a completed event (“did / became”), or
a change of state (“has become / is now”).

But this sentence talks about a general, habitual situation, not a single event:

她平时在学校也常常觉得很累。
- “She usually also often feels very tired at school (as a general pattern).”

For habits / general truths, you normally don’t use 了.

If you add 了, you change the meaning:

她在学校觉得很累了。
- “At school she now feels very tired (she wasn’t before; there has been a change).”
她刚才在学校也觉得很累了。
- Refers to some specific past time (just now at school she felt tired).

So:

No 了 = general / habitual truth ✅
With 了 = specific event or change ❌ for this context

What is the typical word order pattern shown by this sentence?

This sentence is a good example of common Mandarin word order:

Subject + Time + Place + Other adverbs + Verb + Complement

Mapped onto the sentence:

她 – Subject
平时 – Time (“normally / usually”)
在学校 – Place (“at school”)
也常常 – Other adverbs (“also often”)
觉得 – Verb (“feels / thinks”)
很累 – Complement (adjective phrase: “(very) tired”)

So:

她 + 平时 + 在学校 + 也常常 + 觉得 + 很累。

If you keep this template in mind, you can build many similar sentences:

我平时在家也常常觉得很累。
他们周末在图书馆经常觉得很困。
我早上在公司总是觉得很忙。

What’s the difference between 常常, 经常, and 总是 in a sentence like this? Could we replace 常常?

All three are frequency words, but with slightly different feelings:

常常 (chángcháng) – “often, frequently”
- Very common, slightly colloquial.
- Neutral frequency: “many times, quite a lot”.
经常 (jīngcháng) – also “often, frequently”
- Very close to 常常, often interchangeable.
- Slightly more common in writing/formal speech, but used in daily speech too.
- You could say:
  - 她平时在学校也经常觉得很累。 ✅
总是 (zǒngshì) – “always” (or “almost always”)
- Stronger than “often”; suggests “basically every time / unfailingly”.
- 她平时在学校也总是觉得很累。
  - Suggests a more serious or constant problem: she always feels very tired at school.

So:

常常 / 经常 ≈ “often”
总是 ≈ “always”

In the original sentence, 常常 indicates it happens a lot, but not necessarily 100% of the time.