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Topic
Area
The difference between uncountable - or 'mass' nouns (information,
water, nylon, etc) and countable nouns (chair, table, friend, pen)
How
to respond...
In English - as in many languages - nouns fall into
two categories: uncountable and countable. As their respective names suggest,
we can either count nouns (2 chairs, 6 tables, many friends, etc) or we
can't count them (an information, 26 waters, a few cottons, etc). Some
nouns can be both countable and uncountable (a coffee/coffee, a glass/glass,
etc). Students need to know which nouns are which. The problem is: while a noun
in their language may be countable (in this case, information) in English
it may not. We don't usually use the indefinite articles a or an
with uncountable nouns, which is what this student has done. Other
commonly confused nouns include:
accommodation
advice
bread
furniture
luck
news
progress
traffic
work
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