plurals
| |

Plurals for elementary students

ByZdenda

Plurals are quite easy to understand. In English 1 is a singular and more than 1 is plural. To put it easy you add -s to the end of a singular form to create the plural. However, it is not always that easy, as there are several exceptions.

In this post I would like to present this simple grammar in a mind map, two mnemonics and two games.
I hope you will find this post useful.
ADVERT:
[showmyads]

Plurals – mind map

The following mind map shows the way a student should think when they try to form a plural. First they have to decide whether the plural is regular or not.
To remember the irregular plural here is a simple and short story to help.

Three men and women have six children. It is a lot of people.

Then the students should decide whether they need to add -es. -es is added if the singular ends with x, s, z or h (this rule is simplified. The singular must not end with -ath, but there are no words at elementary level with this ending.) To remember the letters here is a simple mnemonic:

haz six (do not worry if your students change it to haz sex. In fact, they will remember this much better).
plurals

Plurals – mind map

There are two simple games to practise the plurals. Both of them will play on any mobile device you can think of, so you or your students can practice anywhere they go.
The first one is called reaction and you should type the singular form of the noun and then click on the frog as soon as it appears.
ADVERT:
[showmyadsa] Plurals – Reaction

The second game is a quizz. Type the plurals and if you pass the test you will get a chance to play a car race. The aim of the game is to get to the end.

Plurals – Car race
(Visited 1,247 times, 1 visits today)

Similar Posts

How are you infographic
|

How are you?

ByZdenda

Yesterday English Through Music published an awesome song called “How are you?”. As the song is easy to remember and sing, I contacted Jules and asked him for a permission to write a post around the song. He kindly agreed and here you can see the result. ADVERT: [showmyads] This post is mainly for beginners…

Placement test
|

Placement test for learners of English

ByZdenda

Placement tests are very important for students of languages. First, they can serve as motivation because they show whether the students improved their knowledge. Second, they help students choose the correct course on their level. And last but not least they inform students how good their English is. ADVERT: [showmyads] However, good placement tests are…

11 Comments

  1. “-es is added if the singular ends with x, s, z or h (this rule is simplified. The singular must not end with -ath, but there are no words at elementary level with this ending.) ”

    What about nouns ending in GH (laugh, cough, trough, bough, etc.)? All make a plural by adding “s”.

    And nouns ending in z. As far as I know, the only one in very common use is “quiz” (plural quizzes).

  8. Thank you for your comment. You are completely right. However, this mind map is really only for elementary students and I try to keep it as simple as possible. I hope that my students will master the basics and all the exceptions will be introduced and noticed later.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.