This study empirically investigates the noun awareness of first-year students in middle school as grammar education learners to derive implications for education about nouns. Altogether, 110 participants in the first year of middle school engaged in a noun discrimination task with 27 words that were confirmed through prior research and an experts’ evaluation process. Results show that the learners’ noun discrimination level tended to be significantly lower than the non-noun discrimination level. Furthermore, this result was interpreted as being related to abstract nouns. By checking the noun identification of words, we also confirmed that the trigger for grammar misconceptualization is related to abstract nouns. Based on this, various topics such as scaffolding for middle school learners are discussed.