Контрольная работа: Reculiarites of Teaching English

I’m afraid of spiders.

She was wearing blue trousers.

Uncountable nouns are words like water, rice, energy, luck. These are things that we can divide (a drop of water, a bowl of rice, a piece of luck), but not count. You cannot say one water, two waters, etc. These words do not have plurals. The indefinite article a/an cannot be used with uncountable words.

It’s nice weather. (Not: … a nice weather.)

Water is made of hydrogen and oxygen. (Not: A water…)

A lot of words can be both countable and uncountable, with different meanings or uses (e.g. iron, an iron; coffee, a coffee). Some plural words have no singular (e.g. trousers, scissors).

Putting it in another way, we can use:

a/an or the +singular countable: a hat – the hat,

the or zero + plural countable: the hats – hats,

the or zero + uncountable: the water – water.

A very important point: singular countable nouns must always have an article (or another determiner like my, this). We can say a cat, the cat, this cat, my cat, but not cat. Do not leave out the article before the names of professions.

Alice is studying to be a doctor. (Not: …to be doctor).

In order to show the difference in using definite and indefinite articles with countable and uncountable nouns I use pictures and tables (see Appendix 1). There is a great number of exercises which can help students to understand the difference between countable and uncountable nouns. For example:

1. Which of the underlined parts of these sentences is right?

Margaret has got very long hair / hairs.

We had a very good weather / very good weather when we were on holidays.

Sorry I’m late. I had trouble / troubles with the car this morning.

I want something to read. I’m going to buy a / some paper.

I want to write some letters. I need a / some writing paper.

Bad news don’t / doesn’t make people happy.

I had to buy a / some bread because I wanted to make some sandwiches.

2. Complete the sentences with the correct form, singular or plural, of the given nouns. When necessary, choose word in parentheses in some of the sentences.

chair I bought some………..

furniture I bought some………..

fruit There (is, are) a lot of ……….on the table.

vegetable There (is, are) a lot of ……….on the table.

dress Mary has a lot of ……………in her closet.

grammar I know a lot of …………………….

word I’m learning a lot of new……………….