Real ESL

This is my next lesson on articles. I was in my kitchen, preparing for a party, so I took out a bunch of food and used it to explain articles.

When you watch, please notice how I pause. Sometimes I say “Um.” Sometimes I say something wrong and correct myself. It’s not the perfect way to speak. However, it is the most natural. You are going to need a moment to think sometimes - say “Um” or “Uh.” Pausing words are different in different languages.

At one point, I started to say “a piece of bread” and though it’s possible to say this, I meant “a slice of bread,” so I corrected myself. If you need to correct yourself, just do it right away as I did.

One more thing … when you are talking about corn, broccoli and lettuce, you can make them countable by saying an ear of corn, a stalk of broccoli or a head of lettuce. However, it’s much more common to leave these words uncountable and say “some corn on the cob” or “some broccoli” or “some lettuce.” I have a partial transcript and vocabulary explanation below.

Transcript/Vocabulary:

Right now, we’re going to talk about using A, THE, SOME in front of countable and uncountable nouns.

I’m going to use food as an example because I’m preparing for a party and I pulled out some food.

So, let’s look. Here are some carrots.

You want to say, “Pass me a carrot.” The second time you say it - “The carrot is fantastic.” So, the second time you use that word, you use THE.

Here is an avocado. Here is a cucumber.

Here are some tomatoes. (Use SOME with both uncountable nouns and countable plural nouns.)

Here is a pepper.

We just say, I’m going to bring some corn on the cob. (Corn on the cob is not countable.)

Right here, I have some peaches. In fact, I have two peaches. Peaches, uh, this word, is countable.

I want a peach. The peach is fantastic.

Or right here. Oh, look. Here are some beets. I’m going to put the beets … Did you hear that? The second time I used it (I say ‘the’). I’m going to put the beets on a salad.

Okay, now what about broccoli? What on earth do we do about broccoli? Do we say “a broccoli, one broccoli, two broccolis”?
(what on earth … - this is an expression before a question to show surprise)

No, it’s not really countable. How can you count it? You just have a bunch of it. Same as lettuce. We can’t really contain it. There might be a lot, a little.

So, we just say, “I need some broccoli.” We don’t say “One broccoli, two broccoli, two broccolis.” That doesn’t make sense. (That doesn’t make sense = That is not easy to understand.)

Okay, how about bread? You say a piece of - a slice of bread. Or you say a loaf of bread. Or “Give me some bread.” We don’t say “a bread.” That’s weird. (weird = strange) Kim’s note - it’s also wrong!

How about butter? Also uncountable. Let’s put some butter in this.

Water. You go to someone’s house. You say, “I’ll have some water.”