Collective nouns in english contents introduction

Conclusion
A noun is countable if you can have more than one instance of it. The word exam is countable because you can have, say, four exams scheduled at the end of the year. The word concentration, however, is uncountable, because it would not make sense to speak of having four concentrations, even though you will need a lot of concentration to study for all four exams. Many words have both countable and uncountable meanings, depending on the sentence.
Knowing whether the particular use of a noun is singular or plural is quite straightforward. Just ask the question, Am I referring to more than one instance of something?
A noun is definite when it is clear to your reader which specific instance or instances of an entity you are referring to; otherwise it is indefinite. Often the first use of a noun is indefinite and subsequent uses are definite.
When I started university, I had a phobia about exams. I conquered the phobia by writing lots of them.
Here, the first sentence establishes for the reader the existence of the writer’s former phobia. By the second sentence, the reader knows exactly which phobia the writer is talking about—the one about exams just referred to in the previous sentence. The first use of a noun can be definite if the reader can figure out from context or some other clue just which instance of an entity the writer is referring to.
The point of my professor’s exams was to make sure we understood the course material.
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