3.1 Counting your chickens
What's the difference between:
1. paper/ a paper
2. room/ a room
3. light/ a light
4. hair/ a hair
5. glass /a glass
6. time/ a time
1. Paper means the material in general we write on. A paper could be a newspaper or a report written on a particular subject.
2. Room = space while a room is a place with walls in a building.
3. Light refers to illumination (there's no light because of the building opposite) while a light is a device that provides artificial light
4. Hair is the general word, referring to the mass taken together (He's got long hair) A hair would be an individual one that you wouldn't want to find in your soup.
5. Glass is the material from which a glass is made.
6. Time is the abstract concept (I haven't got time) while a time is an occasion (there will come a time when...)
Do it yourself
Complete each phrase with a suitable noun from the countable or uncountable box. There may be more than one answer.
| Uncountable | Countable |
| luggage meat paper glass rice | books people cards tools clothes |
Reading Activity
Johnny Appleseed
John Chapman (September 26, 1774 – March 18, 1845), often called Johnny Appleseed, was an American pioneer nurseryman who introduced apple trees to large parts of Pennsylvania, Ontario, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, as well as the northern counties of present-day West Virginia. He became an American legend while still alive, due to his kind, generous ways, his leadership in conservation, and the symbolic importance he attributed to apples.
The popular image is of Johnny Appleseed spreading apple seeds randomly everywhere he went. In fact, he planted nurseries rather than orchards, built fences around them to protect them from livestock, left the nurseries in the care of a neighbor who sold trees on shares, and returned every year or two to tend the nursery.
He is remembered in American popular culture by his traveling song or Swedenborgian hymn ("The Lord is good to me..."), which is today sung before meals in some American households. "Oooooh, the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord, for giving me the things I need, the sun and the rain and the appleseed. The Lord is good to me. Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen."
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike License 3.0