Let's Learn English! Topic: Groups of People 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦👩‍👦👨‍👧‍👦
24:45 Share

Well, hello and welcome to this English lesson about groups of people. In particular, I'll be talking about the collective nouns that we use to talk about different groups and what those groups do.

English, you need to be able to talk about groups of people because you might be in a band. You might go and watch a sports game. You might be one of the spectators. There are a lot of words we use to describe people when they're all together. After all, life isn't about doing things by yourself all the time. Sometimes, it's fun to go out and be part of a group of people to do a specific activity or

to do something that only works if you have more than one person or lots of people. So once again welcome to this English lesson about the collective nouns we use to talk about groups of people. A group. So the word group is the general term. The most common term for more than three or four people. You can't really have a group of two.

there's two people we just say two people. If it's in a class and you have to work with another student we would say your partners.

When you have three people though you can call it a group or four or seven or fifty or thousands. When you have a whole bunch of people in the same place. The general term would be a group. So you can see here is a group of people. It might be a group of people at work but this is definitely more than two people in one place. So we would call this a group. Again group is the general term for describing three or more people.

the same place. They don't always have to be in the same place but I think you know what I mean. A mob. So there's a few ways to describe a mob. A mob is a large group of people and they're usually angry and

they're doing something they're not supposed to be doing. So, a mob is not kind usually. Usually, a mob is angry about something or they might be intoxicated. Maybe they're celebrating a recent win by their team or a loss and

but this would be a mob. Um and we have a couple of words to describe mobs. You might say an angry mob like I just mentioned or an unruly mob. I should have put the word unruly on the screen but a mob would be a large group of people. Yeah, who are either

Like they're upset about something or you can even have a mob form from a celebration especially if people are intoxicated and they might start destroying things.

team. Uh so a team is a group of people who all play the same sport and all are part of the same group of people that play against another group of people. I think you know what a team is. It's probably one of the first words you learn in English or one of the first 500. You know he plays on a football team. He plays on a soccer team. She plays on a hockey team. So

We also though use the word team to talk about work as well. So I could be on a team and

that team might be assigned a project. So at your work the boss might say Joe, Frank, Lisa, I'm going to put you on a team and you need to find out how to make more money for the company. And so now you are part of a team and you will work with those people on that project. So again you might be on a basketball team. You

you might be on a team at work that has to figure out how to be more efficient or how to make things work better. So, sometimes, this team might be more fun than this team.

gang. So, you will see this on TV and in movies. Hopefully, you don't see this very often in real life but a gang is often used to refer to a group of people usually teenagers or people in their 20s who commit crimes and do illegal things. If you are a parent, you do not want your kid joining a gang.

Now we do use this word sometimes subtly like me and a gang of friends went to see a movie but when you watch TV and you watch a police show if they're having trouble with a gang they usually mean a group of people who are committing crimes maybe they're doing other illegal activities and the police are trying to catch them. So gang.

protesters. So, protesters are people who are very very upset about something. They maybe don't like what the government is doing and so they will make signs and they will gather as a group. The protesters will gather maybe outside of a government building and they'll have their signs and they'll yell things like taxes are too high. Um

I was trying to think of another one but there are many things that you can protest and if you are part of a group that is protesting, we would call you a protester. So, here we have a whole bunch of protesters. They are in the act of protesting. They are very upset about something. I don't know what it is. The far sign says stem. Maybe, maybe they, maybe they don't like plants. That's just a little joke. I don't know what they're upset about.

union. So if you work at a factory, if you work in an organization where the workers have united so that when they negotiate with their employer, they have more power. We call that a union. Some people are in a union and some people aren't. In Canada, if you work at a steel factory, you will probably be in the steel workers union.

you are a carpenter in Toronto. You are probably part of the Carpenters Union. So union is when workers join together and

that they're not all individuals. So groups always have more power than an individual person and so sometimes people at a place of work will unionize. They will join together as a union in order to be able to do things together. Like especially to negotiate working conditions and wages. These are not words.

But these are these are things we say. This is kind of a hard one to explain. You will understand the meaning. The other day, I had a car full of kids. I went on a field trip. So, I had a car full of kids. I had a van full of kids. But these words, if you look them up, they don't actually exist. They're just a very informal way of saying that every seat in your vehicle has a person in it.

So, you might say, oh, I had to drive my kids to school and I had to drive my neighbor's kids to school. I had a car full of kids this morning or the other day, I went to pick up my kids and all of their friends wanted to come to our house. So, I had a whole van full of kids. So, again, I

aren't really words but they are words. So they aren't words in the sense that if you look them up they will be in some dictionaries but they're not official English words. Carful and vanful. Club. So a club refers to a

group of people who all have the same interest. You might be in a bird watching club. You might be in a chess club. You might be in an archery club. By the way, I didn't join one but I would like to. You might be in a nature club. So, a club refers to a group of people who all share the same interest in something. Right now, sometimes,

not this spring but sometimes Jen is asked to make a presentation at a gardening club. A gardening club would be a group of people who all enjoy gardening and they get together once a month or every other week to talk about that. So a chess club would meet regularly and it would be a group of people who all like to play chess. They would get together to play chess.

audience. I think this one is familiar to you but I did want to talk about the difference between spectators, a crowd, and an audience. So, an audience is anyone watching something on a stage or on a screen.

So we wouldn't use this to talk about a football game. You wouldn't say there was a large audience at the football game. In fact I broke my own rule there by saying something out loud that we don't normally say in English. You would say how big was the audience at the play? Were there a lot of people in the theater? Yeah it was a huge audience for the movie. So an audience is for anything that

Like a play, if you're watching dancers, if you go to a magic show, uh if you're watching a movie, we would call you the audience. The group of people who are watching what is happening. A more general term would be crowd. So, was there a was there a a pretty big crowd? Oh, you went to the new movie. Uh was it a pretty big crowd and you would say, yeah, there was actually the theater was quite full. It was a big crowd. So, a more general term.

And then spectator or fans are the words we use to talk about the group of people who watch a sports game. So, when I go and watch the Toronto Blue Jays, I'm a spectator. I could also use the word fan, okay? So, there are spectators in this stadium. There are fans in this stadium watching this game and hopefully enjoying it.

Crew. So, crew is used in a lot of ways. You can use crew to talk about this type of group. This is a group of people doing physical labor. So, at work, I might be on a team but as a teacher, I would never be on a crew.

But if I was fixing roads or building houses or any of that physical labor, I might be on a crew. So, this is a road crew. They are here to fix the road. You could also use the word crew to talk about the people who are on a ship or even an airplane or even a spaceship. They are the people who make the boat go.

people who steer the boat, the people who load the boat and empty the boat, they work on the boat. So, this is the crew of this ship and this is a crew working on the road. And again, just to clarify, this

crew is usually a group of people doing physical labor like they're shoveling, they're digging, they're cutting. It wouldn't be used to talk about people at a job where you're just pushing paper like I do. So, here is a crew working on the road, a crew on a ship. So, this word has two pronunciations and I say clique. Some people say click. This is a group of people usually teenagers who are friends and

but it usually implies that they don't allow other people to be part of the group. Cliques, I'm going to use the word clique. You can say clique if that's how you want to learn it. Cliques are by nature a little bit rude. You know, your high school experience might be that there was a clique of guys and

who were friends and they didn't want anyone else to be friends with them. There was a clique of girls and they were just kind of rude. They wouldn't let other people join them and then we also have the word cliquey. Like they're acting very cliquey. Like if five teachers always went for a walk at lunch together, we would say, oh, they're being a little bit cliquey because they're choosing to be their own little group. So, I guess you can use it for adults as well and

Um class. So, this is probably a familiar one as well. Class is used to refer to a group of people who are learning. It's used to refer to a group of students. So, when you have a classroom full of students or a class full of students, uh we call them a class. So, we

when I go to school today, I have to teach two classes. I have a class of um computer students and I have a class of French students. So, each group is there to learn that subject and I refer to them as my class. So, this is my class of computer students. This is my class of French students.

band. So a band is a group of people who get together to play instruments and to sing. If they're good, they also write songs and they will then sing their own songs. A cover band sings other people's songs but a band hopefully has their own songs. This is the police. This is the band I'm currently listening to as I journey through re-listening to the songs of my youth and

Uh if you recognize any of them, you'll probably recognize Sting in the middle and on the far side is Andy Summers and this is Stewart Copeland. Um they wrote some pretty good songs. Uh it's been my playlist for a few weeks now and I am very much enjoying it. So, a band is a group of people who play instruments and sing. Um a band can also just play instruments. They don't have to sing but the general um

The general definition would be they play instruments and sing songs. Cast. So, a cast is the group of people in a play or movie or TV show. Generally, more for a play. Like if you go see a stage play like in a theater with people on stage, we would say they are the cast and I'm just thinking now, you also have the people behind the scenes who we would call the crew and

there's another version of crew there but this is the cast of this play. They are the actors. They learn their lines and they perform the play on stage. But yes cast and crew. Um so you can have a crew working on the road, a crew on a ship and then the crew is the people behind the scenes of a play who make everything work the way it's supposed to. A board. So this is a very official business term. It's

business might be so big that it has a boss but it might also have a board or sometimes called a board of directors. These are the most important people at that business and they make all of the decisions. So this could possibly be the board of a large company. Sometimes

Sometimes it's called a board of trustees, a board of directors. It has a variety of names but the general term would be the board. So, there is in my place of work, a school board. A school board is a group of people who tell the individual schools what to do. So, a board um

It's like a group of people who are the boss instead of I mean there's still a boss but the board would be the group of people who um who make the big decisions. I've never been on a board. Someday uh I would like to be on a board. I think that would be fun. A panel. So, a panel is a group of people usually who have knowledge in a specific area who are asked to sit on a stage and

that someone can ask them questions and interview them. If you've ever gone to any kind of convention for work. They might say oh in in the main hall there's going to be a panel of experts and they're going to answer questions about global warming or something like that and how it will affect your business. So here we have what I would say is four experts

someone who is leading the discussion. You don't normally have a panel of people without one person kind of asking them questions and then interviewing them. So, this would be a panel of experts talking about something important. I don't know. I just found the picture online. Um I'm assuming that they are experts. I don't actually know. I

Alumni. So, alumni would be the group of people who all graduated from a specific school or college or university. So, when you complete your university degree, you graduate. You are now part of the alumni.

So, if they ever have a reunion, they will contact the alumni. The group of people that grows larger every year of uh the group of people that have graduated from that institution. Alumni.

Staff. So, staff is used to refer to people at a workplace. All the people at a workplace. If I owned a restaurant and if it was a large restaurant, I might have a staff of 30 people. You know, four chefs, 15 servers, like I might have a huge staff. If I look at my school, my school has a staff of about 35 people. So, those are all the people that work there.

So generally though we use staff to talk about places of work like restaurants, office buildings. If I had a construction company I would most likely say I have ten people working for me two crews of five. I probably wouldn't use staff to talk about construction workers. So it does mean like people who work in a place like this.

Um I have a staff of me for YouTube. I'm the only one on staff. Uh there's no one else and this is where the word staff room comes from. In the school, you have a staff room because the staff at my school go to the staff room for lunch.

A choir. A choir is a group of people who love to sing and then they get together and they have a choir director and they learn songs and then they perform the songs to an audience.

So a choir is something that I have never been part of. I am not able to sing on key very well. Uh and so a choir though is awesome to listen to. When I'm in the audience and I hear a choir especially at Christmas it is very very cool. So a choir that's the name for a group of people who

who and it's a formal group like it's not oh it's a choir anyone can come usually it's like 20 30 40 50 people who meet regularly to practice a set of songs so that they can perform them so it's somewhat official a committee so a committee is similar to a team

committee is usually in charge of something and it's usually a relatively small group of people. So at my place of work sometimes I'm on a team to tackle a project. Sometimes I'm on a committee every year. So one of the committees at our school is the social committee and their job is to plan an interesting and fun thing for the teachers to do every other month so that we stay happy. So

So basically a committee. Group of people who are in charge of one thing. A troop. So you can have a dance troop. You can have a troop of soldiers. They sound the same. They are spelled different. Uh so this is a troop of I think dancers um we wouldn't use this for singers necessarily. Um if you were yeah mostly for dancers. Like if you have ever been in a dance group it would be called a troop.

Usually it means they're paid though I think. And then of course in the army you have troops but you can also refer to a whole group of them as a troop. So there was a troop of soldiers that were walking down the street. Force. So you can use this to talk about the police. You could say that he is on the police force.

you could even shorten it and just say how long has he been on the force? So if you have a friend who is a police officer you could say oh my friend she's on the police force or she's on the force. How long once you say police force you can just use the word force after that. Um so my town has a really small police force. I think the force only has two officers because the town is so small.

jury. So, if you watch any kind of television, you are probably familiar with a jury. So, a jury is a group of people who listen to a court case. It will be presented by two lawyers and they will have to decide if the person in court is

guilty or not. So if you watch a TV show where the police catch someone and then they take that person to court you will sometimes see a jury. A group of people who listen to each lawyer. They listen to the evidence, the proof, and then they need to decide if that person is guilty or not. And then of course we just have the word people.

could use the word people to talk about groups of people. So, this is kind of a funny one. The most common phrase is probably like, oh, people are crazy or people aren't as kind as they should be. So, you can use it to start a sentence, the word people and you are referring almost to the whole world, I guess. I wish people were kinder. I wish people helped each other more. I wish people were just nicer sometimes.

So, there's how you can use that to talk about

large undefined group of people. Basically everyone in the world or your community. And then we have of course family. So family is the word used to describe the group of people who are all related to each other. Um grandparents, parents, kids, cousins, uncles, aunts. We call that group family. So a family then can be small. So you can just talk about the parents and the kids. And

but family can also refer to all of the people who are related. Um so how big is your family? Well, my family um if I counted all of my uncles and aunts and cousins, it's quite large. If I just count my household, there are seven of us. So, family, the group of people who are all related to each other.

Hi, Bob the Canadian here. Thank you for listening to this English podcast lesson. If you would like to support me in the work that I do as an online English teacher, please visit patreon.com slash bobthecanadian.