3. Language work: Articles (revisions)

Study these nouns.

a supermarket technology a computer money

Supermarket and computer are countable nouns.

We say a supermarket and supermarkets. Technology and money are uncountable nouns. They have no plural and you cannot use them with a or an.

Study this paragraph.

Computers have many uses. In shops a computer scans the price of each item. Then the computer calculates the total cost of all the items.

We use a plural noun with no article, or an uncountable noun, when we talk about things in general.

Computers have many uses.

Information technology is popular.

We use a/an when we mention a countable noun for the first time.

In shops a computer scans the price of each item.

When we mention the same noun again, we use the.

The computer calculates the total cost.

We use the with countable and uncountable nouns to refer to specific things.

The price of each item.

The total cost of all the items.

The speed of this computer.

A Here are some common nouns in computing. With the help of the dictionary divide them into countable and uncountable nouns. In most dictionaries nouns are marked C for countable and U for uncountable.

1. capacity 2. memory 3. drive 4. data 5. monitor 6. speed 7. device 8. mouse 9. port 10. disk 11. software 12. modem

B Complete these texts with a/an, the (or nothing at all) as necessary.

The Walsh family have (1) ______ computer at home. Their son uses (2) ______ computer to help with (3) ______ homework and to play (4) ______ computer games. Their student daughter uses (5) ______ computer for (6) ______ projects and for (7) ______ email. All (8) ______ family use it to get (9) ______ information from (10) ______ Internet.

I use (1)______ computers to find information for (2)______ people. Readers come in with a lot of queries and I use either our own database or (3)______ national database that we’re connected to to find what they want. They might want to know (4) ______ name and address of (5) ______ particular society, or last year’s accounts of a company and we can find that out for them. Or they might want to find (6)______ particular newspaper article but they don’t know (7) ______exact date it was published so we can find it for them by checking on our online database for anything they can remember: (8) ______ name or the general topic. And we use (9) ______ computers to catalogue (10) ______ books in (11) ______ library and to record (12) ______ books that (13) ______ readers borrow.

Language work: collocations 1

C Look at the HELP BOX and then match the verbs (1-5) with the nouns (a-e) to make collocations from the text on pages 2-3.

give keep access enter transfer

money a PIN databases presentations records

HELP BOX Collocations 1 Verbs and nouns often go together in English to make set phrases, for example access the Internet. These word combinations are called collocations, and they are very common. Learning collocations instead of individual words can help you remember which verb to use with which noun. Here are some examples from the text on pages 2-3: perform operations, do research, make calls, send texts, display data, write letters, store information, complete exercises, carry out transactions.

D Use collocations from A and the HELP BOX to complete these sentences.

1. Thanks to Wi-Fi, it's now easy to __________________ from cafes, hotels, parks and many other public places.

2. Online banking lets you __________________between your accounts easily and securely.

3. Skype is a technology that enables users to __________________ over the Internet for free.

4. In many universities, students are encouraged to __________________ using PowerPoint in order to make their talks more visually attractive.

5. The Web has revolutionized the way people __________________ with sites such as Google and Wikipedia, you can find the information you need in seconds.

6. Cookies allow a website to __________________ on a user's machine and later retrieve it; when you visit the website again, it remembers your preferences.

7. With the latest mobile phones, you can __________________ with multimedia attachments – pictures, audio, even video.