Any / Some / None

I am sure most ESL Teachers have come across the confusion between

Any

And

Some

And

None

Teacher: What did you do last weekend?

Student: Anything! I was so bored I did anything.

 

So here are "some" handy tools / exercises I have found and passed around!

 

 

Use:

ANY and SOME are used for objects and people.

Use ANY for negative sentences: Marsha doesn't have any paper today. She forgot it at home.

Use SOME for affirmative sentences: Sara has some paper. She will lend some paper to Marsha.

***Use SOME / ANY for questions: Excuse me Sara, do you have any paper? / Excuse me Sara, do you have some paper? ***A general guideline about any / some in questions: If the speaker thinks the answer is probably NO, the speaker will probaby use ANY. If the speaker has no guess about the answer, the speaker will probably use ANY. If the speaker thinks the answer is probably YES, the speaker will probably use SOME.

What are SOME and ANY?

Some and any are determiners. We use these words before nouns in order to add meaning. The words some and any are used for countable and uncountable nouns.

 

1) Terry has ____ pennies in her pocket.
2) Tomas doesn't have ____ pennies in his pocket. His pocket is empty.

 

3) Angela doesn't like to eat ____ vegetables.
4) In fact, last night she didn't eat____ salad. Her mother was angry!
5) But Angela always likes to have ___ ice cream for dessert.
6) She'd be happy if she could eat ___ vegetable-flavored ice cream!
7) But we know there really isn't ___ vegetable-flavored ice cream!

 

8) He decided to have ____ pizza instead. He's not a nice brother!

 

I also love to pass along this joke. My students always love it and it's really handy!

 

This is a little story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought that Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done

 

I took this joke from here but I am sure most of you have heard this somewhere or the other!