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[puzzle]

Dear teachers,
Can you help me out with the agreement between verbs and subject, especially when these words, such as "loads, piles, masses"& " a load of , a mass of ,a pile of" etc. modify the nouns, ? What forms are correct? I searched the internet, but people say differently. I'm puzzled.

Thank you very much!

[IanT]

It often depends on whether the thing there's lots of is countable or uncountable.

For example, I would say

"There's loads of water" but "there are loads of bottles"

"There is a lot of beer" but "there are a lot of cans"

"there's lots of cheese", but "there are lots of types of cheese"

Hope helps,
Ian
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Please note: all my answers here refer to British English.

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