Question

How can I teach collective nouns to my students?

Answer 1

Hint: A collective noun is a word or phrase that refers to a group of people or things as one entity. One common error that arises from using collective nouns is subject-verb disagreement: writers often become confused about whether to treat a collective noun as singular or plural. While collective nouns are mostly treated as singular, there are exceptions.

Complete answer:
Collective nouns represent more than one person or thing in a class. It isn’t possible to have just one lion in a pride, and a single flower does not make a bouquet. Thus, a collective noun always describes a plurality of one kind or another. This mental image of “multiple” sometimes causes us to choose the wrong verb tense with a collective noun.

Incorrect: The choir are singing to a sold-out hall for the third time in a row. They are performing A German Requiem by Brahms tonight.
Correct: The choir is singing to a sold-out hall for the third time in a row. It is performing A German Requiem by Brahms tonight.

From the example above, we can see that the choir, composed of many people, is a singular unit. One can assume that they will perform the Brahms requiem as one. It is possible that each singer will start the piece and proceed according to his or her own speed, resulting in a cacophony. But that would be unlikely. That is why our choir uses the singular verb rather than the plural verb are. It is also why the choir takes the pronoun it rather than they.

The past tense affords a wonderful respite from this subject-verb agreement problem. We get this break because in the past tense, first-person and third-person verb forms are the same.
Correct: I was singing to a sold-out hall for the third time in a row.
Correct: The choir was singing to a sold-out hall for the third time in a row.

Here are some examples,
- A school of dolphins.
- A skein of geese.
- A murder of crows.
- A pack of dogs.
- A flock of seagulls.
- A herd of elephants.

Note: Some Collective Nouns That Are Always Singular “Everyone, everybody, no one, and nobody” are always singular. The use of collective nouns is tricky. One must consider having a strong root in English language to conquer that part of grammar.