Grammar reference and practice 5.1

5.1 ■ Countable and uncountable nouns

Countable nouns

• ■Countable nouns have a singular and a plural form.

  ■We use a / an with the singular form and some / any with the plural form.

  I eat an apple every day.

  I've got some apples in my bag.

  I haven't got any apples in my bag.

Uncountable nouns

• ■Uncountable nouns only have a singular form.

  ■We don't use a / an with an uncountable noun. We only use some / any or no article.

  ■There is no plural form of uncountable nouns.

  I eat some bread every day.

  My brother loves bread.

  Have we got any bread in the cupboard?

  We haven't got any bread.

REMEMBER! We use some in affirmative sentences and any in negative sentences and questions.

• ■We often use units of quantity with uncountable nouns.

  These units of quantity can describe:

  a part or portion

  a piece of cake, a slice of cheese, a loaf of bread

  a container

  a carton of milk, a bottle of juice

  a measurement

  a kilo of meat, fifty grammes of sugar

1Write U (uncountable) or C (countable). 

• 1rice

• 2apple

• 3chair

• 4juice

• 5milk

• 6water

• 7cheese

• 8pen

• 9biscuit

• 10bread

 

2Complete the sentences with a / an or some. 

• 1We've got aansome cheese and aansome biscuits.

• 2A:What's in your lunchbox?

  B:AAnSome tomato, aansome carrot and aansome sandwiches.

• 3I want to do my homework. I need aansome pen and aansome paper.

• 4A:Do you need anything from the supermarket?

  B:Yes please! We need aansome milk and aansome sugar. And please get aansome newspaper!

• 5They live in aansome big house with aansome beautiful garden.

• 6There's aansome glass on the table and there's aansome juice in the fridge.