Teacher Discussion Forums

this is a hard topic!! especially for my bulgarian students - the bulgarian language has no indefinite articles (a/an) so my usual logic, ie a noun is uncountable if you can't say 'A sand' for example doesn't mean anything to them. i am looking for interesting ways to teach this concept - spoken games, spoken exercises. i'm a fan of LOTS of repitition. just explaining the concept won't get the job done.

i am most concerned about teaching this concept in how it relates to the question 'how many/how much' - how many for countable nouns, how much for uncountable.

so far the only idea i've come up with is lots of pictures with objects, and my students will have to ask eachother, how many apples are there? or how much milk is there?

any other ideas?

thanks!!

You've got the basic idea. The truth is that it is a conventional distinction (in fact many countables can be considered uncountable and vice-versa).

I usually teach these in the context of grocery shopping. Have them build recipes or grocery lists. One thing I have tried to pin down is that oftentimes if it is a liquid (or minus form, or minute) it is a non-countable. Other than that --like most of the English lanugage-- it is a matter of memorizing.

Teaching definate and universal articles is a bit seperate, if they are having issues with that, then I would work on that first. Teach the difference between "a" and "an"-though if they are basic, perhaps you might want to leave off the h words. I would put two bowls of fruit and ask them to give me a banana or the banana (one bowl has many, one has only one), or that sort of thing.