Another person confused by this lesson

Question

I'm also very confused by this lesson...
The tip in the text of this lesson states "You will never find es followed by bien/mal. However, está can be followed by bueno/malo, but the meaning will be different" (it doesn't really explain what that difference is though).
 
In the test I checked "Está malo que comas 6 veces al día." (It's bad to eat 6 times a day) as valid and it was marked as wrong. "Está buen que ayudes a tu hermana con los deberes" (It's good that you help your sister with her homework.) was also marked as wrong and it's not easy for me to see why.
It's early in the morning, so perhaps I'm missing something obvious?
Gracias
Geoff

Answer

Hola Geoff
The reason why "está malo que comas..." was marked as incorrect is because you are using estar with the adjective "malo" - with estar, you need the adverb "bien / mal", so the correct answer would have been "está mal que comas...".
The other one is correct because you are using it there correctly: estar + adverb (bien / mal), so, "está bien que ayudes a tu hermana" is correct. 
It's a bit difficult to see in the beginning because mal/malo and bueno/bien don't always correspond with how they are used in English. For example, you can say in English: "It's good to be here" where you will always see that "good" as an adjective; you wouldn't see it as an adverb because you wouldn't say "it's well to be here", but we do say this in Spanish: "está bien estar aquí" (bien being an adverb). Although you could also say "es bueno estar aquí" with bueno as an adjective, but then you need ser, not estar: es bueno... 
Saludos