Grammar Practice in Context - David Bolton, Noel Goodey 1997
35 There is/There are: Is there a bank here? - Yes, there are two
Quick reference
We use There is/There are:
• to introduce a piece of information. There’s a new teacher at college.
• to describe what we can see. Look. There’s a fly in my soup.
• Singular: There’s (is) a man at the door. Is there a bank here? There isn’t a park here. Plural: There are two cars outside. Are there any buses? There aren’t any taxis.
• We use There is before a list of things if the first item is singular.
There’s a book, a newspaper and some magazines on the table.
• We use There is or There are when we mention something for the first time. If we then want to give more information about it, we use It’s and They’re.
There’s a car outside. It’s red. There are two letters. They’re both for you.
1 Use forms of there is/there are to complete this telephone conversation between an estate agent and a person interested in buying a large three-storey house in London.
’How many bedrooms (1) ... on the top floor?’
’(2) ... three.’
’And how many bathrooms (3) ...?’
’(4) ... only one bathroom on the top floor but (5) ... another on the first floor.’
’(6) ... much noise from traffic?’
’Well, (7) ... quite a lot of traffic, but (8) ... much noise.’
’(9) ... room to park a car?’
’No, (10) ... But (11) ... usually plenty of parking spaces in the street.'
’(12) ... an underground station nearby?’
’Yes, (13) ... two in fact.’
’(14) ... any people living in the house at the moment?’
’No, (15) ... So, il you’re interested, I can show you round the house at any time.’
2 Read the text below about a Greek island and look carefully at each line. Some of the lines are correct, and some have a mistake. If a line is correct put a tick (✓) after it. If a line has a mistake in it, underline the mistake and write the correction in the brackets.
Example: Two kilometres from the only big town on the island, there are an airport. (is)
(1) It isn’t a very big airport - it’s only got one very short runway.
(2) There are only one real road on the island and it’s only 18 kilometres long.
(3) There’s buses which go backwards and forwards along this road every half an hour.
(4) In the summer they’re usually very full because there’s dozens of hotels on the
(5) island. There are on the south coast where there are several good beaches.
(6) Every summer there are thousands of tourists from Northern Europe. But in the
(7) winter it’s very different. There’s only a few hundred people left on the
(8) island and they are mostly old people.
(...)
(...)
(...) ...