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I am enrolled in an evening program conducted on every Wednesday. In the schedule, an upcoming Wednesday is left blank. I want to ask the coordinator through email whether that particular Wednesday is a holiday for my program. Which of the following is correct?

Is/Are there classes on next Wednesday?
Is/Are there lectures on next Wednesday?

Asking "Is there class on next Wednesday?" feels a bit odd.

M.A.R.
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    Please note that there are no spaces between the punctuation marks and the sentence's last word. – M.A.R. Jan 02 '16 at 16:28

1 Answers1

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"Is there class on next Wednesday?" may sound odd (and in fact I'm having a little trouble figuring out the precise grammatical function of class here), but at least in American English, it is idiomatic and would be the most common way to ask this question.

You could also omit the word on and ask "Is there class next Wednesday?"

If you ask "Are there classes next Wednesday?", it would be interpreted as asking whether classes will be held on that day in general, not as a question about your particular class.

For example, suppose I teach at a university. Next Wednesday is not a general holiday, and most classes meet as scheduled, but I am leaving town that day and will cancel my class. If one of my students asks "Are there classes next Wednesday?" I will answer "Yes." If she asks "Is there class next Wednesday?" I will answer "No."

"Is there classes next Wednesday?" is simply a grammatical error, because classes is plural but the verb is is singular.

Nate Eldredge
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  • what about this: "would the class X be held on the next Wednesday?" – Cardinal Aug 01 '15 at 23:45
  • @Cardinal: You want future tense here, not conditional: will, not would. The should also be omitted before next, and optionally on. I would also omit it before class. And I'm not sure what you mean by "the class X"; you would not say "the class history". So you could say "Will class be held next Wednesday?" – Nate Eldredge Aug 02 '15 at 00:02