Countable and Uncountable Nouns

When teaching English to Asian (and Spanish) people I often run across the issue of them not understanding the difference between countable and uncountable nouns.

Of course for English native speakers, most of the time we aren't even aware of the difference, we simply use the correct rule from many years of speaking the language and absorbing the rules by osmosis. Yet for students of English, the rules for determining whether a noun is countable or uncountable can be tricky.

Now, before anyone thinks I'm going to prove that I know what I'm talking about by spouting obscure examples, I need to say that in English, as with all languages, there are exceptions, and modern spoken English isn't always faithful to the rules of old.

Despite this, some expressions just don't sound right, and most native speakers haven't become so lazy that we can throw the rules away.

So, for the benefit of anyone who really would like to know why I'm writing all of this, I've discovered that practicing countable nouns regularly makes a huge difference to my students spoken English.

The simple rule to be kept in mind by the student is that a countable noun has both a singular and plural form, for example a pen, or many pens, a computer or some computers.

Uncountable nouns are usually only singular, such as news or furniture. Simply, ask yourself if you can have one news or one furniture. The answer is no, you can't, making these nouns uncountable.

The most common problem I face with students, and countable and uncountable nouns, relates to the words many and much. Often I hear students interchanging them, they themselves know something is wrong, but often they fail to realise their choice or much or many is incorrect, instead assuming that the noun in question needs to be altered in some way.

A lot of practice usually solves the issue.