The use of articles in English
There are three articles in English – “a”, “an” and “the”.
A. “A” is used before an indefinite noun/noun phrase beginning with a consonant sound.
e.g. – I want to buy a big house. (“b” is a consonant)
In the above example, your listener/reader doesn’t know which big house you want to buy. Maybe you don’t know which big house you want to buy either.
B. “An” is used before an indefinite noun/noun phrase beginning with a vowel sound.
e.g. – I want to buy an older house because it’s cheaper. (“o” is a vowel)
In the above example, your listener/reader doesn’t know which older house you want to buy. Maybe you don’t know which older house you want to buy either.
C. “The” is used before a noun/noun phrase that is specific to both the listener/reader and the speaker/writer.
e.g. – The house at 62 Overland Drive has recently been renovated.
In the above example, the listener/reader knows which house the speaker/writer is talking about (i.e. – the one at 62 Overland Drive).
D. No article is used when the speaker/writer is referring to a concept/thing/phenomena in a general way.
e.g. – ______ Houses in Toronto are generally expensive.
Exercise:
Do the exercise below. Write “a”, “an” or “the” in the blanks below. Afterwards, check your answers below.
- _______ Condos are usually much cheaper than _______ houses.
- _______ cost of condo fees discourages some people from buying _____ condos.
- _______ Semi-detached houses are generally cheaper than _______ detached houses.
- _______ Homeowners have to pay _______ property taxes.
- Many, perhaps most, people who are selling their home employ _______ real estate agent.
- ________ cost of housing in Toronto is generally quite high.
- ________ cost of housing in ________ eastern suburbs of Toronto is generally cheaper than in ________ city of Toronto itself.
- If you are _______ first-time homebuyer in Canada, you may be able to withdraw money from your RRSP for your mortgage.
- If you buy ______ home, you’ll have to get _______ real estate lawyer to finalize _______ transaction.
- _______ Mortgage rates in Canada are presently rather low.
Answers:
- _______, _________
- The, __________
- ________, ________
- __________, _________
- a
- The
- The, the, the
- a
- a, a, the
- _______
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Mike Tiittanen
I'd like to share my knowledge as an ESL pronunciation and grammar teacher with you.
Doctor Mike's English Center 
Hello Dr. Mike,
Could you please, please, please stop overloading yourself with too much work!? How about take a short break? We understand that you have to mark the assignments of your own class too, don’t you? Our teacher is chasing after us for our Online Learning homework :(…We all are rushing in hope of meeting the deadline…
But your work/blog is for everyone who loves to learn…NOT for a particular group. So…
May I ask you, Dr. Mike, if you would also approve ‘The house at 62 Overland Drive has been recently renovated. / has been renovated recently.’ other than your ‘…..has recently been renovated.’ ?
For part D, No article is used when the speaker/writer is referring to a concept / thing / phenomena (Shouldn’t it be phenomenon?) in a general way.
Merci beaucoup !!
Yes, the adverb “recently” can be placed in either one of the other places you listed. Nowadays, many English speakers (including myself) are oblivious to the distinction between forms of words like “phenomenon” and “phenomena”. We often have only a hazy feeling that to be very formal, and academic, “phenomenon” is perhaps considered the singular and “phenomena” is considered the plural. This is probably because word endings like this (-on/-a) are of Latin/Greek origin, and are foreign to English speakers. So, we often tend not to be very aware of these grammatical distinctions since they are not used as productive grammatical suffixes in English. As such, they really are like vestiges of a foreign language, so many of us think like “who cares?”.
Ahhh! Your target group is your high school students. Do I guess right? 🙂
adult ESL learners
Dr. Mike,
Please kindly take a second look at your
Your Daily Routine (edited answers)
and,
I am not sure if the following links can be of any help to you
https://breakingnewsenglish.com/
esllibrary.com
https://www.esl-lab.com/difficult/dental-care/
https://www.esl-lab.com/intermediate/healthy-lifestyle/
Our teacher is a retired elementary school teacher. He’s pretty nice though…
Thanks for sending me the web links.
I just feel like a volunteer teacher, that’s all.
However, you are doing something you love…..That’s what you told us.
Hi Dr. Mike,
I’m also a volunteer, at Carefirst. April 19 – 25 is National Volunteer Week 2020. Can the following be a ‘virtual gift’ to you too? You manage to understand and even read some Chinese, don’t you?
Thanks volunteer teacher! Here’s a token of appreciation…
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/inside-a-toronto-icu-what-it-takes-to-care-for-covid-19-s-most-critically-ill-1.4901853
From watching the above CTV News, we do learn that… in real daily life, people do speak every single word clearly (apart from those articles, most prepositions, and most conjunctions) in order to get the message across accurately, without paying any attention to rhythm or linking at all.
May we know about your perspective in this regard Dr. Mike? Thank you!!
Yes, I know what you mean. I would say that newscasters often use careful pronunciation when doing the news. This definitely makes it easier for everybody, particularly non-native speakers, to follow. Occasionally, I watch the news in French. I find that I can often follow the news in French reasonably well, but when I have been in Quebec, and listened to people talking informally, I had hard time understanding almost anything. So, I think the difference here is between casual pronunciation,which is how people usually talk in most situations, and careful pronunciation. So, I think to really become proficient in listening in any language, it is necessary to learn how the language is pronounced casually.
About 44.5% of the Quebec population are bilingual. However, only 11.2% of the population in Ontario can speak both English and French. So, Dr. Mike, you are one of the brightest of the brightest !! 🙂
Thank you, but I don’t think that because I understand some French I am “bright”. It just means that I studied French in school and I have practiced French a little bit by watching TV. French is generally an “easy” language for English speakers because French and English are fairly closely related historically. About half of the words in English come from French because a French-speaking group conquered and occupied English about 1,000 years ago. So, English speakers can often guess what a French word means if they see it written down or maybe if they hear it pronounced slowly and carefully. This is similar to the situation between other historically related languages.
Mike, Almost all nurses working in hospitals take a shower after work, not some time before heading for work. 🙂
You are an objective and humble teacher!
It’s surprising to learn that ‘About half of the words in English come from French’. I only know some words we borrowed from French such as faux pas, RSVP, eau de toilette, café au lait, crème brûlée, du jour, foie gras, grand prix, laissez-faire, hors d’oeuvre, comme ci comme ça etc. There must be a lot more, definitely. You know the best.
By the way, does the word ‘repertoire’ also come from French? Thanks Mike!
yes
Sociolinguistic studies have shown that people whose native language is English may have their English affected in a minor way by the native language of their parents IF their social network involves a lot of people (e.g. – friends and family) who regular speak their parents’ first language to them. However, it will not affect their English in a major way. I don’t see this as a negative thing at all. It will not affect their ability to communicate in English.
You always try to be reassuring and encouraging Dr. Mike!
You pointed out the mistakes that I had made on my writing assignments when I was in your Reading/Writing/Grammar class (till Jan. 11th). That Hongkonger ESL teacher ‘corrected’ my pieces of writing submitted to him by putting most of those ‘my old mistakes’ on them, hence, changed my writing from ‘bad’ to ‘worse’. Of course,I wasn’t happy, so I kept talking back loudly in class…(he wasn’t angry though)…until I moved to another class on Feb.22nd.
Learning is a lifelong process. Don’t you think so Dr. Mike?
And,will answering our questions be an extra burden on your shoulders?