« IELTS Reading: examples from Cambridge 13 | Main | IELTS Writing Task 2: conclusion mistakes »

January 29, 2019

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

bones - are many in the body

behaviour - is an individual quality to a particular place or a person

I think that

1/ using the plural because of " recipeS"
2/ "urban and rural blackbirds" can regard as a singular noun ( blackbird in general), it can be also a plural noun (urban blackbird and rural blackbird)

1) singular bone is not accepted means general about bones not specific bone.your bones.
2 ) because of "the" .It may contain singular or plural countable/ uncountable.

Behaviour is usually an uncountable noun, so it is rarely used in the plural:
✗ Parents should be able to prevent their children's crimes or bad behaviours .

✓ Parents should be able to prevent their children's crimes or bad behaviour.


✗ The media often encourage violence and aggressive behaviours.

✓ The media often encourage violence and aggressive behaviour.

bones is a countable noun

behaviour is an uncountable noun

Because it's not specified which bone we are talking about. It has no article nor does it have any determiner.
-----
includes recipes to strengthen your BACK bone.

includes recipes to strengthen your the smallest BONE in your body.

Dear Simon,

I am writing to thank you for your extremely helpful website on IELTS.

I am from Iran and I have recently managed to get two solid 8s in Listening and Reading parts a 7.5 in Speaking and a 7 in Academic Writing.

I relied heavily on your essays on this website and found them a GREAT help. Also, your advice on keeping exposure to English for at least 3 hours so that we can succeed on exam day helped me a lot; I studied articles from The Guardian, the New Yorker or the Economist and I listened to as many English recordings as I could.

I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation again to you. Thank you VERY much for all the information you share with all us from around the world.

Best regards,

Fatemeh

FROM SIMON:

1) It would be strange to have a recipe that helps only one bone in the body. If you use the singular 'bone', the reader will wonder which bone! The idea is that something helps your 'bones' - all of them.

2) 'behaviour' can be an uncountable OR a countable noun. Both work fine in this case.

behaviour (uncountable) = the overall way of behaving

behaviours (countable) = the specific actions that make up the overall behaviour

FROM SIMON:

Congratulations Fatemeh! I'm happy that you found my lessons so useful. Thanks for your positive words.

Thank you very much, dear Simon

Because Bones is proceeded by plural, includes recipes whereas, behaviour/behaviours is followed by urban and blackbirds, which are singular and plural respectively.

The comments to this entry are closed.