Grammar for Everyone - Barbara Dykes 2007
1 Nouns - Common nouns
Introduction
Part II The parts of speech
It is easy to assume that secondary school students would already know what a noun is. But when the time comes to build on that knowledge, for example to investigate noun forms such as noun phrases and clauses and their role in the sentence, we realise that the foundation we are about to build on may itself be shaky.
Make sure to give a definition with a full explanation for each part of speech. Then follow with reinforcement activities geared to the level of the students. Practice exercises will reveal any deficiencies in their understanding.
Common and proper nouns are easy to understand by even the youngest students. Collective and abstract nouns, being less obvious, may be left a little longer or until they figure incidentally during teaching. By practising these terms, students are also enabled to increase their vocabulary and gain confidence from the ability to spell.
For each category about to be learnt, students should firstly be given, according to their age and learning level:
• a definition of the term, with discussion
• examples, preferably written on the board
The students, themselves, should then be able to:
• give the definition, i.e. correctly answer the question ’What is a ...?’
• give examples (or word groups) in that category
• recognise examples in a sentence or list of words
• use each one correctly in a sentence
Older students may also learn the origins of the words, as given in the following definitions, or in a dictionary.
1 Nouns
Nouns mean every thing to us!
Definition: The word ’noun’ comes from Latin nomen meaning ’name’. A noun is the name of a thing. Everything that exists has a name, whether you can see it or not. A blind person cannot see something, but that does not mean that it isn’t there! It may only exist in our minds, like hope, beauty or calories.
There are four kinds of nouns.
Common nouns
These are names of everyday things that we can see, hear or touch. For example:
table, banana, volcano, song
We can put the word ’the’ in front of them and make sense, as in:
the rope, the poison
If it does not make sense, the word cannot be a noun.
1.1 Activities: common nouns
Students could do the following:
1. Walk outside, touch and name things as they pass. This is especially popular with young children.
2. Walk outside. Come back in and name the things that they saw. In class, the children can take turns to name one thing without repeating any.
3. As above, then write down the things that they saw. Read the list aloud. Write the words on the board.
4. Using pictures of indoor or outdoor scenes provided, students name or list the objects they see in their picture. This activity is particularly popular with ESL students of any age.
5. Make sentences using some of the selected words, underlining each noun.
6. Play any form of the ever-popular parlour game ’The Old Oak Chest’, in which students in turn name items found in the Old Oak Chest, each person repeating the list in its correct order and adding one item of their own. This game can be played in a variety of ways, such as naming articles bought at the market, or found under the Christmas tree.
7. List things beginning with letters in alphabetical order.
For their own reference, students should write a heading NOUNS in their grammar exercise books, followed by an accurate definition and several examples.
Checklist: common nouns
Students should now be able to:
• correctly answer the question ’What is a noun?’
• say one way to be sure that a word is a noun
• give examples of common nouns
• recognise nouns in sentences
• use each noun in a sentence