Plurals For IELTS Listening
No matter how easy they seem to be, plurals are very important for IELTS listening. Even more, it is quite obvious that you will get questions, answers to which will be plural. This is because IELTS is an English test and will surely check if you can listen for plurals.
There are no half points in IELTS, so even if you write the correct answer but forget the ‘s’ you will be marked wrong. For instance, if the answer is books and you wrote book, you will not get any marks for it. Let us now understand plurals in English.
When you want to change the number of a particular thing, you change them from singular to plural. There are two types of plural nouns –
- Regular – If by adding ‘s’ to the singular noun, you are able to change the noun from singular to plural, it is said to be a singular noun. For instance, plural of book is books.
- Irregular – The nouns which do not follow the rule of simply adding ‘s’ are known as irregular nouns. Example, plural of fish is fish.
Rules For Making Plural –
- Nouns that end in -ch, x, s, z or s-like sounds are made plural by adding es. Example-
witch witches box boxes gas gases bus buses - Nouns that end in a vowel + y take the letter s. Example – plural of boy is boys.
- Nouns that end in a consonant + y drop the y and take ies. Example – plural of baby is babies.
- Plurals of nouns that end in f or fe usually change the f sound to a v sound and add s or -es. Example- plural of knife is knives.