Collective Nouns
Activity 1
Ask learners to think of some nouns and make them singular and plural. Then, ask if they can think of any nouns which you cannot make plural. Show them the examples in the next slide and see if they can guess the words.
Activity 2
Ask the learners to look at the table of collective nouns and organise them into two categories. Use the 'hint' button to help if your learners are stuck.
Solution: some nouns refer to groups of people and the others to animals.
Activity 3
Ask the learners to look at the table of nouns which always appear in the plural form. Ask them if it's possible to make a sentence using them in the singular (it shouldn't be!).
Use the 'hint' button to help if your learners are stuck.
Ask the learners to organise them according to what they are used for.
Solution: some nouns refer to items you wear and others tools which you use.
Learners can debate whether spectacles and glasses can count as both!
Activity 4
Ask the learners to read the seven sentences and discuss what collective noun could fill each gap. Click the 'hint' button to reveal some possible solutions and ask learners to match them to the most appropriate sentence. Accept any logical answers.
This lesson is adapted (with permission) from Words and Meanings: A Systematic Guide for the Teaching of English Vocabulary, by Gabriele Stein.
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Collective Nouns
Objective
To understand diffferent types of collective nouns.
Usually, nouns can be singular or plural, like book or books.
What other examples can you think of?
There are some nouns which only appear in the singular. Can you think of any?
Some nouns always mean 'more than one' and therefore they have no plural form, for example cups, saucers and plates can be described as crockery. Can you guess the word you could use to describe the nouns in the descriptions below?
- chickens, geese and ducks kept on a farm for their meat and eggs poultry
- objects like tables, chairs, beds, cupboards furniture
- cows and bulls kept as farm animals for their milk and meat cattle
There are also collective nouns. These are can be singular or plural, but they refer to a group of people or things.
Can you organise these collective nouns into two groups based on what groups they refer to?
Types of living beings
Some nouns are names for things that consist of two equal parts which are joined together. They only occur in a plural form. Can you sort these nouns into two groups and describe the kinds of nouns in each group?
The purpose of each item.
Some kinds of objects usually appear in small groups that are collected together. Read the sentences below and fill the gap with an appropriate collective noun. Click 'hint' to see some possible options.
- She arrived with a lovely _____ of flowers.
- When the police opened the suitcase, they found _____s of 100 Euro notes.
- I can't get into your room because of the _____s of dirty clothes!
- Time to go through the _____ of letters that have arrived.
- He decorated the cake with a ______ of berries.
- They brought ______s of firewood for the fire.
- All the books had been arrangaed in ______s, so that they could be put into boxes.
bunch, bundle, cluster, heap, pile, stack, wad
This lesson is adapted (with permission) from Words and Meanings: A Systematic Guide for the Teaching of English Vocabulary, by Gabriele Stein.
Part and Whole
Activity 1
Ask the learners to read the five sentences. In small groups, ask them to discuss what the words in blue have in common. Guide the discussion towards:
- They are nouns.
- They refer to different animals.
- They describe parts of animals.
After the discussion, show the learners the solution in the next slide to check their answers.
Activity 2
Ask the learners draw a picture of a face, and to label it with as many parts as they can think of. Use a countdown to make the task more exciting. Ask them to share and compare their work after they finish. You could also draw a face on the board, and label as many parts as possible as a whole class.
Remind learners that all these 'part' words are examples of nouns.
Activity 3
Ask the learners to read the five sentences in the next activity. For each sentence, learners must identify what the noun forms a part of e.g. a stone is part of a cherry.
Use the 'answer' button to check their answers.
To finish, learners choose three (or more) nouns from the final list and write as many part nouns for each. To make the acivitiy more fun, this could be turned into a game in which learners compete under a time limit to write the longest list of part nouns.
This lesson is adapted (with permission) from Words and Meanings: A Systematic Guide for the Teaching of English Vocabulary, by Gabriele Stein.
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Englicious is totally free for everyone to use!
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If you’ve already registered, you can log in straight away.
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Part and whole
Objective
To explore the way that nouns can point to parts and wholes of things.
Activity 1
Read the five sentences below: what do the words in blue have in common?
- The hunter proudly showed them the antlers he had collected.
- The fins are used for swimming and for keeping balance.
- The udder looked very heavy.
- We wanted to know how the hump had evolved.
- The long trunk pushed the grass into the mouth.
Each word is a noun which refers to a part of a different animal:
- antlers with male deer,
- fins with a fish,
- udder with a cow,
- hump with a camel and
- trunk with an elephant.
There are many words which denote a part of something, and the more we know the parts of an object by name, the more we understand their nature, what they are for and how they work.
Activity 2
Thing we see in everyday life can be broken down into their parts. For example, think about a person's face.
Draw a picture of a face. Think of and label as many parts of the face as you can; then, compare with a partner.
Activity 3
Read the five sentences with a missing word. Work out what each noun forms a part of.
E.g. A stone is a part of a cherry.
| A heel is part of a ____. | foot |
| An elbow is part of an ____. | arm |
| A beak is part of a ____. | bird |
| A drawer is part of an ____, ____. | desk, piece of furniture |
| A pip is part of an ____. | apple, pear |
Choose three words from this list of seven objects and write down as many part nouns as you can think of. Compare with a partner and see who can think of more!
- book
- car
- house
- computer
- classroom
- shoe
- flower
This lesson is adapted (with permission) from Words and Meanings: A Systematic Guide for the Teaching of English Vocabulary, by Gabriele Stein.