Recognize Irregular Plurals Of Nouns

Skill

Recognize Irregular Plurals Of Nouns

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Many nouns in English have irregular plurals, and these irregular forms can cause confusion in written expression questions on the TOEFL test. The irregular forms that are the most problematic are plural forms that do not end in s.

Different criteria was* used to evaluate the performers.

In this example the plural noun criteria looks singular because it does not end in s; you might incorrectly assume that it is singular because there is no final s. However, criteria is a plural noun, so the singular verb was used is incorrect. The verb should be the plural form were used.

The following chart lists the irregular plurals that you should become familiar with:

IRREGULAR PLURALS

  • Vowel change: [man / men, woman / women] , [foot / feet, tooth / teeth], [goose / geese, mouse / mice]
  • Add -EN: [child / children], [ox / oxen]
  • Same as singular: [deer / deer, fish / fish], [salmon / salmon, sheep / sheep], [trout / trout]
  • -IS → -ES: [analysis / analyses, axis / axes, crisis / crises], [diagnosis / diagnoses, hypothesis / hypotheses, parenthesis / parentheses], [synthesis / syntheses, thesis / theses]
  • Ends in -A: [bacterium / bacteria, curriculum / curricula], [datum / data, phenomenon / phenomena], [criterion / criteria]
  • -US → -I: [alumnus / alumni, bacillus / bacilli, cactus / cacti], [fungus / fungi, nucleus / nuclei, radius / radii], [stimulus / stimuli, syllabus / syllabi]

Exercise

Complete the following exercises to reinforce what you’ve learned:

Each of the following sentences contains at least one noun with an irregular plural. Circle the nouns with irregular plurals. Then indicate if the sentences are correct (C) or incorrect (I).

  1. ___ Parentheses is needed around that expression.
  2. ___ He wants to go on a fishing trip this weekend because he has heard that the fish are running.
  3. ___ The syllabi for the courses is included in the packet of materials.
  4. ___ The diagnosis that he heard today were not very positive.
  5. ___ The crisis is not going to be resolved until some of the pressure is relieved.
  6. ___ All of the alumni are attending the reception at the president's house.
  7. ___ A flock of geese were seen heading south for the winter.
  8. ___ The teeth in the back of his mouth needs to be capped.
  9. ___ The fungi has spread throughout the garden.
  10. ___ The sheepdog is chasing after the sheep which are heading over the hill.

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