What appears SIMPLE to native speakers is actually THE HARDEST for the non-native ones!

It is always fun to analyse languages. Different languages have their unique linguistic features and grammatical rules. For instance, French splits up nouns into masculine and feminine; Czech separates nouns into subjects and objects; and English divides nouns into countable and uncountable.

Focusing on English language, the meanings of nouns will always be altered when they are transformed from countable to uncountable (or vice versa). If one mixes them up, it may produce ambiguity and misunderstanding, or even result in embarrassment. For example, someone writes the following in a business annual report: ‘Over the past two years, our company gained 10,000,000 turnovers.’ Readers will most likely be confused by the word ‘turnover’. Does it refer to ‘the amount of business that the company did in that period of time’ (uncountable), or simply mean ‘the fruit pies’ (countable)?

‘A dog’ or ‘Dog’?

Another interesting observation is the way to differentiate between the nouns for food (uncountable) and the nouns for animals (countable), e.g. [1] Would you like a dog? (countable = an animal); and [2] Would you like dog? (uncountable = food, i.e. meat). If you say the latter in a pet shop, it will probably sound a bit odd to the listener.

Non-native speakers always find great difficulties in distinguishing countable nouns from uncountable ones. I believe teaching nouns will be even more challenging than learning them. There are a number of ways to tackle the problem:

First of all, teachers can raise students’ awareness that the misuse of countable and uncountable nouns may cause misconception and awkwardness. Moreover, students should be encouraged to build up a habit of looking up the dictionaries. Last but not least, teachers can create a culture of reading by selecting suitable materials for students. For example, if teachers want to talk about nouns of food, they can look for recipes. The more extensively and frequently students read, the more benefited they will be.