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Nouns

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English Grammar and Skills Toolkit

Nouns

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© Boardworks Ltd 20092 of 10This is an excerpt from the “Nouns” presentation in Boardworks English for Australia,

which contains 235 presentations in total.

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Learning objectives

In this unit you will…

Learn what a noun is and the difference between a concrete noun and an abstract noun

Distinguish between proper, common and collective nouns

Identify count nouns and non-count (mass) nouns

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Nouns are ‘naming words’. They identify people, animals, places, things and ideas.

What is a noun?

Concrete nouns refer to things we can see, touch, taste, hear or smell. For example, ‘dog’, ‘chair’,‘apple’, ‘book’, ‘field’, ‘house’.

Abstract nouns refer to thoughts, ideas, feelings and qualities – things we cannot see or touch. For example, ‘happiness’, ‘sadness’, ‘pain’, ‘fear’, ‘anger’, ‘beauty’, ‘love’ and ‘hate’.

Can you think of five more concrete nouns and five more abstract nouns?

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Different groups of nouns

The names of particular people, places or things, e.g. ‘Katie’, ‘Spain’, ‘Tuesday’. Proper nouns begin with capital letters.

All nouns that are not proper nouns, e.g. ‘cat, ‘table’, ‘hamburger’, ‘kindness’.

Nouns that refer to a group of nouns, e.g. ‘herd’, ‘team’, ‘family’, ‘class’, ‘orchestra’.

All nouns can be divided into the following three groups:

Collective nouns take a singular verb, e.g. ‘The

herd of sheep is very noisy.’

Proper nouns

Common nouns

Collectivenouns

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Proper, common or collective?

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Count nouns and non-count nouns

Common nouns can be count nouns or non-count nouns.

For example, you can have one pizza,

Pizza, hamburger and milkshake are all examples of count nouns. They have a singular form and they have a plural form.

Can you name ten count nouns in your classroom?

Count nouns are, literally, things that can be counted!

and three milkshakes. two hamburgers

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Count and non-count (mass) nouns

Non-count – or ‘mass’ nouns – are nouns that cannot be counted.

For example, we do not say “could I have two milks please”. We say, “could I have some milk”.

Milk is a non-count (mass) noun. It has a singular form but it does not have a plural form.

Here are some more examples of non-count (mass) nouns.

Can you think of any more non-count (mass) nouns?

rice air music salt boredommud

money sand homework meat soap

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Count or non-count noun?

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Team quiz