Sunday, July 24, 2016

Count Nouns vs Non Count Nouns



Count nouns

Can be counted as one or more.

  • pen, computer, bottle, spoon, desk, cup, television, chair, shoe, finger, flower, camera, stick, balloon, book, table, comb, etc.
Take an s to form the plural.

  • pens, computers, bottles, spoons, desks, cups, televisions, chairs, shoes, fingers, flowers, cameras, sticks, balloons, books, tables, combs, etc.
Work with expressions such as (a few, few, many, some, every, each, these, and the number of).

  • a few pens, a few computers, many bottles, some spoons, every desk, each cup, these televisions, the number of chairs, a few shoes, a few fingers, many flowers, some cameras, every stick, each balloon, these books, the number of tables, many combs, etc.
Work with appropriate articles (a, an, or the).

  • a pen, the computer, a bottle, the spoon, a desk, the cup, a television, the chair, a shoe, the finger, a flower, the camera, a stick, the balloon, a book, the table, a comb, etc.
Do NOT work with much (for example, you would never say much pens or much computers).

Non-count nouns

Cannot be counted. They usually express a group or a type.

  • water, wood, ice, air, oxygen, English, Spanish, traffic, furniture, milk, wine, sugar, rice, meat, flour, soccer, sunshine, etc.
Generally cannot be pluralized.

Work both with and without an article (a, an, or the), depending on the context of the sentence.

  • Sugar is sweet.
  • The sunshine is beautiful.
  • I drink milk.
  • He eats rice.
  • We watch soccer together.
  • The wood is burning.
Work with expressions such as (some, any, enough, this, that, and much).

  • We ate some rice and milk.
  • I hope to see some sunshine today.
  • This meat is good.
  • She does not speak much Spanish.
  • Do you see any traffic on the road?
  • That wine is very old.
Do NOT work with expressions such as (these, those, every, each, either, or neither).

Singular and Plural Nouns

A noun names a person, place, thing, or idea.

Usually, the first page of a grammar book tells you about nouns. Nouns give names of concrete or abstract things in our lives. As babies learn "mom," "dad," or "milk" as their first word, nouns should be the first topic when you study a foreign language.

For the plural form of most nouns, add s.

  • bottle – bottles
  • cup – cups
  • pencil – pencils
  • desk – desks
  • sticker – stickers
  • window – windows
For nouns that end in ch, x, s, or s sounds, add es.

  • box – boxes
  • watch – watches
  • moss – mosses
  • bus – buses
For nouns ending in f or fe, change f to v and add es.

  • wolf – wolves
  • wife – wives
  • leaf – leaves
  • life – lives
Some nouns have different plural forms.

  • child – children
  • woman – women
  • man – men
  • mouse – mice
  • goose – geese
Nouns ending in vowels like y or o do not have definite rules.

  • baby – babies
  • toy – toys
  • kidney – kidneys
  • potato – potatoes
  • memo – memos
  • stereo – stereos
A few nouns have the same singular and plural forms.

  • sheep – sheep
  • deer – deer
  • series – series
  • species – species

Basic English Grammar Lessons

Saturday, July 23, 2016

About Software Engineering

Consider the following picture


For computer users, that's not familiar. It's a microsoft windows xp desktop display. In addition, in the desktop there are a number of specific icons commonly called SHORTCUT. If we double-click on the shortcut it will be open a specific software that can later be used to accomplish specific task. 
Almost all areas of life untouched by the use of software. Such us software to create and play music, software to help the cashier in the sale of goods, software to creating documents, etc.
The software is the result of a series of processies or activities known softaware engineering. Whether actualy software engineering?

Some people interpret software engineering limited on how to make a computer program. Though there's a fundamental difference between the software and computer programs.
Software is all the commonds that are used to process information. The software can be either a program or procedure.
The program is a set of command understood by the computer while the procedure is the order required by the user in processing information (O'Brien : 1999).

Understanding  software engineering itself is a discipline tha addresses all aspects of production software, ranging from early stage is the analysis of user needs, determine the specifications of user  requerements, design, coding, testing till maintenance of the system after used.