Language Awareness Task 6

Kevin Stein

Nouns

What is generally meant by count and non-count nouns in English? Comment on the

difficulty in distinguishing between them, and identify any grammatical features

associated with each type. Give plenty of examples to show how you would illustrate

the grammatical features to a group of learners.

Countable and uncountable, sometimes also referred to as 'unit' and 'mass', are two

broad categories of nouns. They are, as their name implies, nouns which can be counted

and those which cannot. Regardless of the grammar text, whether it be Parrot (2000),

Murphy (1994), or Swan (2005), the basic definition of countable and uncountable

nouns is relatively similar. Aside from the whole issue of countability, countable nouns

are also said to have a singular as well as a plural form, while uncountable nouns

usually lack a plural form (Murphey, p. 136). And just in case one might get confused

about why pasta cooked al dente, with its clearly separate strands, is considered

uncountable, some grammars and English teachers have helped popularize the term

'mass nouns' to help us keep in mind that that pasta, rice and sand belong to a category

of "materials, liquids, abstract qualities, collections and other things which we see as

masses without clear boundaries, and not as separate objects." (Swan, 128)

Now if we, as teachers, are asked to teach a unit on the difference between countable

and uncountable nouns, a recipe can be a good first step (Larsen-Freeman, 1991). As a

small homework assignment, ask the students to write up a list of the types and amounts

of foods they happen to have in their refrigerator the day before their next English class.

During the class, the teacher jots down the ingredients needed for a simple recipe on the

board and sees if, pooling all of the foods from all of the students' food lists, it would be

possible to prepare the dish. For example, if the recipe was for an Italian omelet, the

teacher might point to one of the ingredients and say to the class, "I need three green

peppers. Does anyone have green peppers," while underlining the plural 's' on peppers.

Kevin Stein 1kevchanwow@gmail.com

The teacher might then say, "I need 50 milliliters of milk. Does anyone have some

milk?" Countable nouns solicited from students' lists could be written up on the left

side of the board, while mass nouns would be written up on the right side of the board.

As a final step, the teacher could solicit rules around countable and mass nouns and

supplement any important ideas that the students weren't able to generate inductively,

such as the conversion of mass nouns into a countable form by the addition of phrases

like, "a bottle of," "a piece of," or "a head of."

Still, while I have used a number of course books with unit titles such as, "countable vs.

uncountable," it has always seemed a decidedly strange basis for a communicative

language lesson. As Parrot (2000, p. 10) writes, "although the distinction between

countable and uncountable is based on the reality of what the nouns describe, the

distinction is a grammatical one rather than a real one." A point which becomes all too

clear when you start to think about some other foods which might be sitting in a kitchen,

waiting to be eaten. Bread is a wonderful example. Bread is uncountable. And yet if

you have two loaves of bread sitting on your kitchen table, they are quite clearly

countable, at least it is pretty easy to point at each loaf of bread and number them off. I

usually explain to learners that bread is typically cut from a loaf in order to be eaten,

and that anything that needs to be cut, shaved, scooped or otherwise broken down into

smaller units is most likely to be an uncountable noun. Which merely begs the question

of why, in America at least, 3 pizzas steaming on the living room table would be

countable, while those loaves of bread would not.

Grammatical constructs used in a classroom, by necessity, are a simplification of

language. But just because there are moments where a construct falls apart does not

make it useless. If the rules confuse students or contradict actual language in use, then

one would have to begin questioning the value of presenting the rule. But, as can be

seen in the recipe exercise, countable/mass nouns can not only give learners a chance to

practice using the inflectional plural affix-s, but help learners develop concept

boundaries for how plurals are used in English in general, some of which might be quite

different from the student's L1. In fact, the idea of countable and uncountable nouns

can be used to introduce or review a surprisingly wide array of grammatical features for

Kevin Stein 2kevchanwow@gmail.com

students at varying developmental levels.

Adverbs of amount are a natural fit for lessons focusing on countable/uncountable

nouns. Adverbs of amount can pose difficulties for learners when the adverb/noun

word order in the L1 differs from that of English, or if the order changes depending on

the sentence content. For example, in Japanese it would be natural to say, "3 Eggs,"

when discussing ingredients for a recipe, but when explaining the steps to preparing a

dish, the sentence would be said, "Eggs, 3, crack and put in the bowl," as opposed to the

English, "Crack 3 eggs in the bowl." So in the recipe lesson above, if the task was

extended out so students had to teach each other the steps to cooking some of their

favorite dishes, learners could not only work with plurals, but word order around

adverbs of quantity and their relation to countable/mass nouns as well. At a higher

level, adverbial quantifiers could be revisited by discussing issues faced by students in

their city. Problems such as 'too much pollution," "not enough parking" or "too few

bicycle lanes," and "only a little rainfall," could all help reinforce how countable and

uncountable nouns sometimes require different adverbs as well as provide an

opportunity to discuss more colloquial adverbs such as, "a lot of" which can be used

with all nouns.

If we judge a linguistic concept by how well it can be used to help students understand

and integrate grammatical forms, then countable and uncountable can be seen as

impressively useful for its ability to raise students' awareness around article use in

English. Article acquisition is notoriously difficult for learners of English and even

advance learners have a tendency to misuse indefinite articles with mass nouns and

difficulty in differentiating between materials and objects which use the same word

(Ogawa, 2008) (i.e. "There was some broken glass" and "He broke the glass you just

bought"). But the fact that some nouns can be both countable or uncountable, while

potentially leading to confusion for beginning learners, can also be a source of

clarification around article use for more advanced learners. Scott Thornbury (2001, p.

103) has an exercise in which students are presented with a series of images in which

nouns are used in both their countable and uncountable form and learners must use these

images as clues to discover the name of the person in each picture. For example, in one

Kevin Stein 3kevchanwow@gmail.com

image a woman is walking a chicken on a leash, while in another, a man is eating some

chicken. By honing in and exploring one small facet of mass/countable nouns in depth

such as material/object or specific meaning/general concept ("The time of my

life"/"Time is fleeting"), students can begin to develop a better feeling for article use in

general.

At the most advanced levels, countable/mass nouns could be used to explore the role of

elisions in language. The language a wine salesman would use when trying to sell a

case of 1945 Château Mouton-Rothschild (imagine something along the lines of, "These

12 bottles of the finest wine are the very symbol of victory over adversity.") would

differ substantially from what a teenager who stumbled upon a dusty box of wine while

cleaning the basement might say to his friend on the phone ("I found some wine,

dude!") which would be different again from a couple on a date ("How about some

wine?") and different in kind from a rude customer giving his order ("2 house reds.").

Discrepancies in social positions often impacts the number of function words used when

conveying information, and the decision to convert or not convert mass nouns into

countable units through the use of markers such as glass, bottle, or sip could help

learners begin to explore issues of register.

The countable/mass nouns construct could even be visited again within a teacher

training environment, not to explore the categories themselves, but to use the concept of

countable/mass to highlight the constant evolution of language. In general, foreign

words in English have a singular form only, so while the little bite-sized pieces of magic

known as sushi appear to be perhaps the most countable of food, we never say 'sushis'

and must use the counter 'piece' in order to express quantity. But if the foreign word

becomes familiarized within English to the point where it loses it's foreignness, then the

counter can be dropped and we have, as mentioned above, three pizzas on the table and

maybe even two nice futons in the bedroom. But to let in the light, we still open the

shoji (rice-paper screens) as opposed to the 'shojis.'

In the end, the idea of countable/uncountable nouns is perhaps nothing more than a

convenient fiction. It is not a description of the world, but a partial description of the

Kevin Stein 4kevchanwow@gmail.com

language we use to describe the world. It is not one hundred percent accurate, nor does

it have to be. The concept of countable and mass nouns, for all its limitations, can still

help students make sense of some of the truly uncountable possibilities that English has

to offer.

References:

Larsen-Freeman, D. (1991). Teaching grammar. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching

English as a second or foreign language (pp. 279–295). Rowley, MA: Newbury

House.

Murphy, R. (1994). English grammar in use: a self-study reference and practice

book for intermediate students, with answers, (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Ogawa, M. (2008) The Acquisition of English Articles by Advanced EFL

Japanese Learners: Analysis Based on Noun Types. Journal of language and

culture Language and information 3 (3), 133-151.

Parrott, M. (2000). Grammar for English Language Teachers. Cambridge: CUP

Swan, M. (2005). Practical English Usage, (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

(pg. 128-129)

Thornbury, S. (2001). Uncovering Grammar. Oxford: Macmillan Heinemann.

(p.102 ((107))

Kevin Stein 5kevchanwow@gmail.com