"student's book" , a book that belongs to a student.
"student book" ,a book that is written for students and that group of
students can use it.
After thinking it through, I think the best response of the teacher (you!) for this particular student once he or she asked,
I think we should say "what are your name?" since your/her takes "are"!
is probably,
Because name takes "is"!
And if he or she looked confused, then you could add,
It's because name takes "is", so you should say, "What is your name?", or "What are your names?".
If your course is about conversational English and it doesn't emphasize grammar, perhaps this is the best way to go, in my opinion. There is no grammar terminology in the reply. (Please note that I avoided even using the word "either" intentionally.)
- My point is your reply should match your student. It's obvious that this student understands the word take, and he or she could formulate questions and at least understand simple answers, and yet still couldn't tell which word is the main word of a phrase, indicating his or her unclear understanding on common English sentence structures.
However, if your course also includes grammar, then you can take it as a good opportunity to discuss with your student(s) the concept of singular vs. plural in English, and the possessive form of you (which is your) and other pronouns, and how to find the main word in a noun phrase, and sentence structures in English, and so on.
Best Answer
For a list, use "Student Names" or "Students' Names". Remember that nouns can function as adjectives in English. If you want to show group possession, you put an apostrophe after the "s". The second way is considered a fancier way of writing it since most native English speakers rarely use the plural-possessive apostrophe even though it's well-accepted.
For a table-column heading, use "Student Name". Again, remember that nouns can function as adjectives in English. "Student's Name" is also correct, but it's more verbose and doesn't have any advantages over "Student Name".
"Student's Names" is wrong in general English. (Technically, this is also correct for a table and describing the names of a single student, but you will never see this in practice; instead, you will see things like "Student's Full Name" or "Student's First and Last Name".)