2.2 Can you spot the different types of noun?
It’s time to put your new-found knowledge of nouns to the test. The next set of activities are designed to allow you to practise classifying different types of nouns. Don’t worry if you don’t get them all right first time – practice is key and you can return to these activities whenever you need them.
Activity 4 Proper or common nouns?
Read the following passage and highlight proper nouns in yellow, and common nouns in blue.
Comment
As you may have noticed, the proper nouns do all begin with a capital letter.
Activity 5 Count or non-count nouns?
Read the following passage, and consider the nouns shown in italics. Highlight count nouns in yellow and non-count nouns in blue. (As with the previous activity, if you find this activity difficult, you can rewatch the video in Section 2.1.)
Comment
As you may have spotted, there are other nouns in the passage, such as:
activities, week, Saturday, butcher’s, dinner, Sunday, grocery, days, week, market
But the focus here is on some of the ones that make the count/non-count point most clearly.
Some non-count nouns can also occasionally be used as count nouns. In these cases, it’s usually clear from the context that the meaning is ‘a single unit of’ the item:
- I had a yoghurt after lunch. (a pot of yoghurt)
- He bought a whole cheese from the delicatessen. (a wheel of cheese)
- Can you pass me a water? (a bottle of water)
In these cases, you might also get a sense that some words are missing: a yoghurt is shorthand for ‘a tub/pot of yoghurt’, a whole cheese is a ‘whole wheel of cheese’, and a water is really referring to ‘a bottle of water’. Importantly tub/pot, wheel, and bottle are all count nouns.
Activity 6 Abstract or concrete nouns?
Read the following passage. Look at the nouns in italics. Highlight abstract nouns in yellow and concrete nouns in blue.
Some abstract nouns are ‘big ideas’, like peace, freedom, progress – so big, in fact, that they are sometimes written with a capital letter (especially in slogans): ‘We want Peace, Freedom, Progress!’
Some concrete nouns are pretty obvious – they’re solid and take up room, like a table and chairs or a cow or a horse or an aeroplane. Others are less clear: a war is a major event involving lots of people, places and other events within it. It has a beginning, middle and (let’s hope) an end, so it’s definitely not just an idea somewhere up in the air. But if we’re not thinking of a particular event, and we mean ‘the absence of peace’, then war can be used like an abstract noun (‘We are against War and for Peace in every circumstance’).