Another video looking at common mistakes made by upper-intermediate and advanced learners.
‘The traffic are very bad in my area’, ‘At university I do a lot of researches’, ‘The landscapes change dramatically in my country’. Just some of the mistakes we’ve heard from students. Watch this video to practise this area of English.
Transcript for ‘Countable and Uncountable Nouns’
Welcome to this 10 minute video lesson on the subject of countable and uncountable nouns. As usual with these videos we look at the topic by examining the mistakes that are made by upper-intermediate to advanced English students so you’ll get the most from these lessons if your English is at or approaching this level.
As we saw in our lesson on ‘articles’, the simple way to describe a countable noun is whether we can add an ’s’ to the end of the noun – ’book’ x ‘books’, ‘teacher’ x ‘teachers’ – that kind of thing. Words like ‘music’ ,’ traffic’, ‘information’ cannot have an ’s’ added to the end of them and are examples of uncountable nouns.
And if students mistake an uncountable noun for a countable noun it can also lead to other mistakes being made in words that accompany the noun. For example, perhaps the wrong form of the verb is used or the wrong determiner like ‘many’ instead of ‘much’. Lower level students will often make mistakes like ‘the traffic are very bad in my city’,or ‘there isn’t many informations’.
But it’s not just lower level students who have these problems. Here are some mistakes made by upper-intermediate to advanced level students who have recorded themselves trying our online IELTS Speaking practice tests. Can you spot the mistake in each sentence?
1) There are so many rains in my country around that time of year.
2) Some universities do a lot of researches into that area.
3) My grandparents are farmers and own a few small lands in Romania.
4) The landscapes change dramatically in my country from the north to the south.
5) Every information I read about the university indicated it was the best choice for me.
6) Builders caused a lot of damages to the area at the back of my house.
Hopefully you found most of them. Before we correct them let’s look at three ways statements like these could be expressed that would avoid these problems.
Obviously, to begin with you should learn which words are uncountable and then remember to use them together with the accompanying verbs or determiners in the singular form. For example, you’ll know words that describe objects such as ‘milk’, or ‘sugar’ and those that describe general abstract nouns like ‘happiness’, or ‘joy’ that can’t be counted, and don’t take an ’s’. There are lots more very common ones like ‘information’, ‘advice’ and research. Because they’re uncountable you should use the verb with them in the singular form or use a singular determiner:
And remember that some nouns though uncountable that end in an ’s’ such as ‘news’ and should be treated as a singular noun. For example:
The news from the area is quite dramatic.
Of course it’s vital that you develop your breadth of vocabulary at advanced level and you should make a point of learning synonyms for uncountable nouns, including countable nouns. For example,
The scenery was lovely and there were some wonderful views in every direction.
We didn’t take much luggage with us, just 2 suitcases
Here, scenery and luggage are uncountable nouns whilst ‘views’ and ‘suitcases’ are countable.
But when doing this you’ll often have to pay attention to the context in order to find the correct synonym. For example, the uncountable noun ‘equipment’ could be replaced with words like ‘tools’, ‘instruments’ or ‘devices’ but each would have a different use. For example a builder would use tools, a doctor would use instruments whilst someone mad on technology might have lots of devices.
So we’ve looked at the importance of recognising uncountable nouns and also of building your vocabulary to include synonyms. But what happens if there isn’t a synonym but you need to express the uncountable noun in a plural form. Well, another option is to use what’s called a ‘partitive expression’. This sounds very complicated but instead of partitive think ‘parts’ or ‘measure’. So for example, we know we can’t use the word ‘information’ in the plural form. But if we needed to talk about this concept in the plural we could use it with the word ‘piece’ and then perhaps how many pieces. So we could say ‘several pieces of information’. ‘Piece’ is a very useful word as it collocates with lots of different uncountable nouns such as ‘a piece of advice’, ‘a piece of cake’. Here are some very common partitive expressions:
- a speck of dust
- a bit of fun
- a sense of humour
- a drop of water
- an item of news
- a piece of information
- a pinch of salt
So let’s look again at those 6 statements and try to correct the mistakes using any of these three options.
1) There are so many rains in my country around that time of year.
The mistake here is of course that ‘rain’ is uncountable and should not end in ’s’. One way we can express this is to use the word in the singular and change the verb and determiner:
There is so much rain in my country around that time of year.
Or we could keep things plural and use a synonym, countable noun. Depending on the meaning and how severe the rain is we could use any of the following:
There are so many downpours/rainstorms/showers.
2) Some universities do a lot of researches into that area.
The uncountable noun here is ‘research’, so again we could put it in the singular form:
Some universities do a lot of research into that area.
or we could use a synonym if we wanted a plural such as
Some universities do a lot of studies into that area.
3) My grandparents are farmers and own a few small lands in Romania
The uncountable noun here is of course ‘land’. We could express this as an uncountable noun and change the determiner:
My grandparents are farmers and own some land in Romania
Or we could use a partitive expression such as
My grandparents are farmers and own a few small pieces/areas of land in Romania
4) The landscapes change dramatically in my country from the north to the south.
‘Landscape’ is uncountable so probably the most suitable correction would be
The landscape changes dramatically in my country from the north to the south.
5) Every information I read about the university indicated it was the best choice for me.
‘Information’ is of course uncountable and the speaker has used the correct form here but used the wrong determiner. Instead of ‘every’ we could say
All the information I read about the university indicated it was the best choice for me.
Alternatively we could use the partitive expression with ‘piece’ or ‘bit’ such as:
Every piece/bit of information I read about the university indicated it was the best choice for me.
6) Traffic causes a lot of damages to the environment in my city.
Finally, in addition to ‘traffic’, which has been used correctly here, ‘damage’ is also an uncountable noun. So we could simply say:
Traffic causes a lot of damage to the environment in my city.