KS2 / KS3 English Language: Nouns and Noun Phrases

Nouns and Noun Phrases.

Nouns are words that name people, places or things.

For example, ‘man’ and ‘kitchen’ are nouns. One word is naming a person and the other is naming a place.

‘Cake’ is another example. Frank is baking a cake. ‘Cake’ is a noun. It’s a thing. You can eat it or have it, but apparently not both, as the saying goes.

Nouns are usually physical objects. ‘Butter’ is a noun. ‘Sugar’ is a noun. ‘Eggs’ are a noun. ‘Chillies’ are a noun. Wait, chillies! What kind of cake is this, Frank?

Frank is the man’s name.
Names of people are called proper nouns and they always have a capital letter at the start.

But nouns are not always physical objects.

They can also be abstract things. For example, ‘Heat’ is a noun. It’s a concept which is a kind of thing even though it isn’t a physical thing. This cake will have a lot of heat, that’s for sure.

One way of testing is a word is a noun is to see if it can follow the words ‘a’, ‘an’, ‘the’ or ‘some’. For example, the man is baking a cake with some heat.

We know that ‘man’, ‘cake’ and ‘heat’ are nouns because they work after either ‘the’, ‘a’, or ‘some’.

On the other hand, ‘He baked a spicy’ doesn’t work because ‘spicy’ is an adjective, not a noun. It also doesn’t work with proper nouns.

A noun phrase is simply a phrase that acts like a noun. Instead of just one word, it will include a noun and several words that act to modify it.

For example, ‘All of the flour is on the top shelf’. ‘All of the flour’ is a noun phrase. ‘Flour’ is the noun, and ‘all of the’ modifies it.

Man, kitchen, shelves… pile. All nouns. It’s a piece of cake to remember.

Nouns are words that name people, places or things.

Noun phrases are phrases that act like nouns. For example, ‘a fistful of flour’.