How to Count a Noncountable Noun

 

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Now let's continue with our Grammar HELP! Book's Chapter, Nouns and Pronouns. This unit today is for beginners and intermediate learners of English.

What's wrong with this sentence? 

They always try to give us good advices.

How to Count a Noncountable Noun

In our previous lesson, we began our discussion of quantifiers. We discussed how to quantify a count noun.  In this lesson, we discuss how to count a non-count (noncountable) noun.

If you cannot count a non-count noun, then how do you quantify it? 

Take a look at the noun phrases below. What do you see in each one?

three bags of garbage a word of advice
one piece of evidence  seven hours of sleep
fifty gallons of water   two hours of homework
two incidents of violence            a quart and a half of milk
a few hours of sleep  too few hours of sleep

When you want to count units of noncount nouns, you have to use special expressions of units. The appropriate number (e.g. 50) or article (e.g. one) or adverb (e.g. too few) is placed before the unit of measurement (e.g. hours).

Each of the sentences below has a problem with non-count nouns and how they are quantified. There are several ways to fix each sentence. In our Answer Key, we suggest three ways for each sentence.

1) I would like to have more vocabularies.

Solution #1:
Solution #2:

2) I had a lot of homeworks.

Solution #1:
Solution #2:
Solution #3:

3) There are too many advertisings on the TV.

Solution #1:
Solution #2:

Click here to find the answers to the above exercises.

Next... some

I

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