‘The’ is a word largely missing from some languages. Listen to the song and sing along (lyrics below..)!
Especially important for Indonesian students of English!
Modern technology is becoming more common both at home and in workplaces.
When you use the workplace (uncountable) you’re talking about the abstract idea of the workplace as a feature of people’s lives along with school and the home. In addition, you’re usually talking about one or more of the following: Continue reading
I have one wife, one child, one cat and one dog.
In the IELTS speaking test candidates often mention their families when talking about their homes. Sometimes they do this to justify only having a small home, or maybe they want to explain why they chose to live in a particular area.
But in any situation when you offer information about your family, your listener will make certain assumptions, in particular about numbers, and if the number is one then this is often best communicated without using the word ‘one’. Continue reading
New Zealand now recognises all animals as sentient beings!
Discuss with a friend.. If animals are sentient beings (they can think and feel pretty much like humans can), how does this affect our attitude to:
After your discussion, read the following text and select articles as appropriate. Continue reading
Today I challenge you to make some predictions based on a text and at the same time supply suitable articles! (Rules for selcting articles or ‘s’ here)
I’ll post the answers to the following questions tomorrow. Meanwhile, if you think you already know the answers, write them in a comment below this post!
There was confusion in class recently about the meaning of ‘sustainability’, so let’s take a few minutes out to get our heads around this extremely important social issue. Below is the opening of the Wikipedia entry on sustainability. Find out what sustainablity actually is and at the same time practice using articles!
A related practice activity focusing on the effects of plastic on the environment can be found here. And if you need ideas about how to choose articles to go with nouns, read this.
As usual, if you think an article isn’t needed, just leave the drop-down menu blank! Continue reading
Just as plastic causes problems for our planet, articles cause all kinds of problems for students of English, especially when their first language doesn’t really have them (Indonesian!).
In a more recent practice activity the focus is on sustainable development and how that relates to the envirnoment. Meanwhile if you’re not sure about how to use articles in English (a, an, the), read this first, and then try the activity below!
In addition to the instruction given, if no article is suitable then don’t make a selection. Good luck! Continue reading
For every noun you speak or write, you need to use grammar to communicate one of the meanings in the ‘meaning’ column in the table below. Continue reading
I agree that famous people should be followed by medias.
This sounds like an alien race called ‘The Medias’ have arrived on earth intent on following famous people. I think this is what you meant: Continue reading
Euthanasia may be one of ways to deliver health resources fairly to people who still want to live.
This is a direct translation from Bahasa Indonesia: ‘salah satu‘.
For every noun in English it is important to communicate one of three meanings:
In the opening example the writer communicated successfully. However, the sentence is gramatically incorrect. If you really must use ‘one of‘ then you need more grammar:
You can see how easy it can be to introduce grammatical error, or to choose the wrong word to follow ‘one of’! A much easier and far more common way to communicate ‘one of many’ is using the indefinite article ‘a‘ (or ‘an‘) – NOT ‘one of‘.
Want to communicate one of many? Use the indefinite article:
For more examples of article use, click the articles tag.