A basic knowledge of Countable / Uncountable nouns is assumed at the beginning. But you may want to revise / find out what the students already know about this problem and about the words we use to indicate quantity in both cases. Once you are sure they are comfortable with the concept, present them with the sheet and ask them to identify the sentences containing mistakes and try to correct those mistakes. This activity may benefit from being a collaborative group one but this will depend on the nature of your class.

As a reference, sentences 2, 4, 5, and 9 are correct and all the others contain one or more mistakes with countable / uncountable quantity words. I have heard variations of number 3 spoken to me again and again and it's worth pointing out just how amusing this sounds to a native speaker.

The students should be able to use some of the information from the first part to complete the grid at the bottom of the page. Words should be classified as follows, unless you disagree.

• Countable:  few / very few / many / not many
• Countable & Uncountable:  no / loads of / plenty of / a lot of / quite a lot of / hardly any
• Uncountable:  not much / little / very little / a bit of

You have a choice of two different methods of getting this handout to your printer. It all depends on whether your computer has "Adobe Acrobat Reader" installed. If it has, then this would be the recommended method for printing out the worksheet. Try selecting the "PDF (Adobe Acrobat)" link below. If all goes well, a new application window should appear including a print button, which when selected will print out one copy.

If, on the other hand you do not have "Adobe Acrobat" select the "HTML (web page)" link below. (Also, this method is recommended for users of Netscape Navigator, which seems to have trouble interacting with the Acrobat program like this.) If all goes well, a new browser window will open, from which you can either click the "print button" on the toolbar or open the "File" menu, select "Print" and then adjust the "Print Dialog Box" to your own preferences.

The final link below is to enable you to print this "instruction page" if you want to. Click on the link, and when the page appears on a new screen you will be able to print it using the browser's "print button" or "file menu". After printing, close the window again so that you can continue to navigate around the site.

For teacher training courses, English courses in Bristol UK and free interactive exercises, visit The Language Project Website.