10 Minute English Grammar: Uncountable and Countable Nouns

Visit http://www.flo-joe.co.uk or http://www.ieltsspeaking.co.uk 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’, 'books’, ‘teacher’, '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.