Do You Make This Mistake In English With Nouns?

Anyone studying for the CSET English or CSET Multiple Subjects tests should understand what nouns are. Probably the biggest mistake you can make is to be arrogant and think you already understand nouns because you know that nouns are a person, place, or thing. There is more to nouns than just that.

This lesson will cover nouns, have a few videos for you to watch, and then end with a CSET practice test.

Nouns

A noun is a word used to name a person, animal, place, thing, and abstract idea.

A noun can function in a sentence as a subject, a direct object, an indirect object, a subject complement, an object complement, an appositive, an adjective or an adverb.

Examples

1. Late last year our boss bought a car.
The nouns are “year”, “boss”, and “car”.

2. Tiger Woods is a golfer.
The nouns are “Tiger Woods” and “golfer”.

Noun Plurals

Most nouns can change their form to indicate quantity or number by adding “-s”, “-es”, “-ies”, etc.

Possessive Nouns

A possessive noun is a noun that names who or what has something.

An apostrophe and s, “-’s” forms the possessive of most singular nouns.

If the noun is a plural noun (i.e. it ends with “-s”), then to form the possessive you add an apostrophe to the end (i.e. “-’”). If the noun is a plural noun and does not end with “-s”, then to form the possessive you add an apostrophe and s, “-’s”.

Noun Clause

A noun clause contains a subject and verb and acts as a single noun-like entity within a