Active Grammar 1 - Nigel Turton 2007

Unit 3 Words used with nouns

● The indefinite article

● Possessive determiners

● Possessive nouns

● The indefinite article

(a banana, an apple)

Someone is feeling hungry.

When you talk about just one person, place or thing, you often use a or an.

I had a banana for breakfast.

Then have an orange or an apple.

REMINDER

The basic meaning of a and an is one.

You use an before words that begin with a vowel sound.

You use a with all the other words.

Here are some more examples of a and an.

PRACTICE

1 Here are some pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. For each piece make a sentence like this:

2 Point to a shape and make a sentence like this:

● Possessive determiners

(my, your, his, our)

Sally likes drawing pictures and writing about them.

Henry is a hippo.

His head is very big.

His ears, however, are very small.

Jamima has a very long nose.

She uses it to dry her clothes.

Her lips are red.

Her eyes are blue.

She goes jogging at night

With a friend called Sue.

These girls are very famous.

Their songs are very good.

Their mum is from Chicago.

Their dad's from Hollywood.

My teddy gets very cold at night,

So it puts on its gloves

Before I turn out the light.

It puts on its hat

And it puts on its scarf.

If you saw my teddy,

I think you would laugh.

The seven words in this box are very useful.

my your her his its our their

You use these words to say who something belongs to.

SINGULAR

I like my new bicycle.

Do you like your new scooter?

She likes her new basketball.

He likes his new school bag.

It puts on its gloves.

PLURAL

We like our school.

You should clean your teeth every day.

They often take their children to the beach.

PRACTICE

Choose one of these words to fill in each blank.

my your her his its our their

● Possessive nouns

(Linda's dress, the king's horses)

Now it's time for a nursery rhyme.

Sometimes you want to say who something belongs to. You can do this by putting ’s at the end of a noun.

Sometimes you just put on apostrophe after a noun.

If a noun already has an -s at the end, you usually just add an apostrophe.

Compare:

1 This is a list of my friends' birthdays.

2 It's my best friend's birthday tomorrow.

Goldilocks opened the door of the three bears' house.

This is my parents' bedroom.

PRACTICE

1 Point to one of the objects and say who it belongs to. Make sentences like this:

2 Now make up questions and answers like this. Work in pairs.

a Whose ball is it? It's Joey's.

b ...

c ...

d ...

e ...