Introduction
It is easy to assume that secondary school students would already
know what a noun is. But when the time comes to build on that
knowledge, for example to investigate noun forms such as noun
phrases and clauses and their role in the sentence, we realise that
the foundation we are about to build on may itself be shaky.
Make sure to give a definition with a full explanation for each
part of speech. Then follow with reinforcement activities geared
to the level of the students. Practice exercises will reveal any defi-
ciencies in their understanding.
Common and proper nouns are easy to understand by even
the youngest students. Collective and abstract nouns, being less
obvious, may be left a little longer or until they figure incidentally
during teaching.
By practising these terms, students are also
enabled to increase their vocabulary and gain confidence from the
ability to spell.
For each category about to be learnt, students should firstly be
given, according to their age and learning level:
•
a definition of the term, with discussion
•
examples, preferably written on the board
The
students, themselves, should then be able to:
•
give the definition, i.e. correctly answer the question ‘What is a
…?’
• give examples (or word groups) in that category
• recognise examples in
a sentence or list of words
• use each one correctly in a sentence
Older students may also learn the origins of the words, as given in
the
following definitions, or in a dictionary.
…
21
A
Nouns
Nouns mean every thing to us!
Definition:
The word ‘noun’ comes from Latin
nomen
meaning
‘name’. A noun is the name of a thing. Everything that exists has
a name, whether you can see it or not. A blind person cannot see
something, but that does not mean that it isn’t there! It may only
exist in our minds,
like hope, beauty or calories.
There are four kinds of nouns.
Common nouns
These are names of everyday things that we can see, hear or touch.
For example:
table, banana, volcano, song
We can put the word ‘the’ in front of them and make sense, as in:
Dostları ilə paylaş: