Articles in English 5 Levels of Difficulty
Hi, I’m Molly. Welcome to Oxford
Online English! In this lesson,
you can test your ability to use
articles: ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’.
Here’s how this lesson works.
There are five levels. Each level is
more difficult than the previous one.
Level one is beginner. Levels two
to four are intermediate. Level five
is high intermediate to advanced.
If you’re not a beginner, start at level two!
At each level, you can see what you need
to focus on if you have difficulties.
Got it? Let’s start with level one.
Look at five sentences. Each
sentence has a gap. You can put ‘a’,
‘an’, ‘the’ or nothing in the gap.
Pause the video and find your answers now!
Ready? Let’s see the answers together.
Use ‘a’ or ‘an’ after ‘there is’,
when you’re talking about one thing.
Use ‘a’ or ‘an’ to say what someone
is, for example to say someone’s job.
Remember that you can’t use ‘a’ or
‘an’ with a plural noun. Use nothing.
Don’t use ‘a’ or ‘the’ to talk about things in
general. If you say ‘I like strawberries’, you
mean that you like all strawberries, in general.
Use ‘a’ or ‘an’ to mean ‘one of many’. This is
a common way to use ‘a’ or ‘an’, so
it’s useful to remember this idea.
Here, there are many possible questions you
could ask, but you just want to ask one.
Use ‘the’ when it’s obvious which
thing you mean. You often use ‘the’
in this way to talk about things
around you which you can see and touch.
There are many windows in the world, but
if someone asks you to close the window,
you probably know which window they mean.
Now, let’s move on to level two.
Here are your sentences for level two.
Here, we’ll focus on when to use ‘the’ or not.
Some of these sentences are missing ‘the’. Some
are correct. Your job is to decide which sentences
are incorrect, and add ‘the’ where needed.
Pause the video and think about it.
Could you do it? Take more time if you want!
OK, let’s see the answers.
In number one, ‘fish’ is general – you
aren’t talking about some specific fish.
However, you could say ‘the
smoked fish’. Do you know when?
You could say ‘the smoked fish’ if you
were talking about food from a menu. You
often use this when ordering in a restaurant.
For example: ‘I’ll have the salmon, please.’
In this case, it’s something
specific. ‘The smoked fish’
means ‘the smoked fish which is on
your menu and which you serve here.’
Meals – breakfast, lunch and dinner
– don’t usually have an article.
Use ‘the’ before a superlative adjective,
like ‘tallest’, ‘most’ or ‘best’.
In many phrases, you just have to remember whether
to use ‘the’ or not. Why do you say ‘on TV’,
without ‘the’, but ‘on the Internet’,
with ‘the’? There’s no real logic to this;
you just need to remember. Try to learn
phrases like this as whole chunks,
so you don’t have to think about whether to use
‘the’ or not when you’re using them in speech.
If you’re talking about people in
general, then you don’t use ‘the’.
For example: ‘Most people in the
UK live in houses, not apartments.’
But, if you’re talking about a specific group of
people, then you need ‘the’. That’s why you say
‘most of the people in my class’ – you’re
talking about a specific, limited group of people.
When you’re talking about
transport, you need ‘the’
if you use the verb ‘take’: take the bus,
take the train, take the subway, and so on.
However, don’t use ‘the’ after ‘by’: go by bus,
get there by train, travel by subway, and so on.
Finally, you often need to use ‘the’
with places in a city, like shops,
supermarkets, banks and so on.
Let’s think about something;
look at two sentences.
Both are possible, but what’s the difference?
Sentence number one, with ‘the’,
means that you know which post office
you’re going to and where it is.
The second sentence, with ‘a’, means
that there are many post offices, and
maybe you haven’t decided which
one you’re going to stop at.
When you talk about places in a
city, you have a specific place
in mind. That’s why you often need ‘the’.
Got it? In the next two sections, you’ll see more
details about when to use ‘the’, and when not to.
One of the biggest challenges with using ‘the’
accurately is different kinds of name. There
are many rules to remember, and they aren’t
very consistent. Let’s practise this now!
Each sentence has two spaces. The question is:
do you need ‘the’ or not? Pause
the video and think about it.
Ready? Let’s check!
Many building names, like cinemas, museums,
theatres and other famous buildings
have names with ‘the’. The Odeon
is a well-known cinema chain.
Street names don’t use ‘the’.
There’s a confusing rule with islands: if you’re
talking about a group of islands, you need ‘the’,
but for an individual island, you don’t use ‘the’.
So, you say ‘the Philippines’ but ‘Luzon’. You
say ‘the Seychelles’ but ‘Hawaii’, without ‘the’.
There’s something similar with
mountains and mountain ranges.
If you’re talking about a mountain
range, like ‘the Himalayas’,
you need ‘the’. But for a single mountain,
like ‘Mount Everest’, you don’t use ‘the’.
Use ‘the’ with names of rivers, seas and
oceans. What about lakes? No ‘the’ for lakes!
This is the kind of time you might be
feeling annoyed with the English language.
Why are there all these rules?
Why don’t they make sense?
First, don’t worry about these things too
much. It’s good to speak and write accurately,
but it’s also not the end of the world if you
make a mistake with ‘the’ in these situations.
Second, learning language in chunks
can really help here. If you learn the
sentence ‘Luzon is the largest island in the
Philippines’, and you remember the sentence,
you don’t have to think about
when to use ‘the’ or not.
Here’s a rule which is useful: if a
name has a place as part of the name,
it probably won’t have ‘the’. Stansted is a place,
so the name ‘Stansted airport’ doesn’t have ‘the’.
Like countries, names of counties,
states, provinces and so on
mostly don’t have ‘the’. Essex is
a county in the east of England.
Then, if you learn in this way, you have many
examples in your head of when to use ‘the’
or not. This can build your
instinct for what’s correct,
which makes it easier to decide when
to use ‘the’ or not in new sentences.
In number five, you can see another example
of a name with a place: Edinburgh University.
It doesn’t use ‘the’.
But, if a name has ‘of’ in it, it generally will
need ‘the’, even if it includes a place name.
And, sometimes there are two names for the same
thing! You can say Edinburgh University, or
the University of Edinburgh. The first
one is more common, but both are possible.
OK? Remember that you might need to review
a section more than once to get it. Also,
remember that these five-level lessons
are designed to help you find out
what you know and what you don’t know. If you
find a section difficult, that can help you
to understand where your weaknesses are,
and what you need to spend more time on.
Here, you’re going to see a topic
which is – in our experience – one
of the most confusing for English
learners relating to using ‘the’.
Before you see your sentences for
level four, look at an example.
Here, are we talking about one orangutan?
No, here, we mean all orangutans.
We’re talking about orangutans generally.
So, why use a singular noun with ‘the’?
Why not use a plural noun and say:
‘Orangutans are found in Malaysia and Indonesia.’?
Well, you can. Both sentences are possible.
Using ‘the’ here means that you’re talking about
a group or category. It can be confusing, because
usually you use ‘the’ to talk about a specific
thing, but here ‘the’ has a general meaning.
Let’s practise this a little more.
Look at your sentences for this level.
So, what do you have to do?
Focus on the highlighted phrases
with ‘the’. Some of these phrases
can be replaced with a plural noun, without ‘the’,
like in the example about orangutans you just saw.
Your job is to find the sentences where this
is possible, and change the noun phrase.
You might need to add some words. Pause the
video, take your time, and think about it!
Ready? Confused? Let’s do one together.
Here’s the answer for number one only.
Here, it’s possible to use a plural noun with the
same meaning, like this. If you want more time to
think about the others, pause the video now.
Done? Let’s see the remaining answers.
In sentences two and three,
‘rich’ and ‘Swiss’ are adjectives.
You can use ‘the’ plus an adjective to talk
about a group or category in general. If
you want to use a plural noun instead,
you need to add the noun – ‘people’.
In sentence five, you can’t use a
plural noun. With musical instruments,
you can only use ‘the’ plus a singular
noun to talk about the category in general.
Again, if you’re questioning your life choices
in watching this video, don’t worry about it.
Many English learners find this difficult,
and need time to understand it in depth.
On the other hand, these aren’t strange
sentences or rules that you only need
sometimes. These rules and topics are relevant
for speaking and writing in almost any situation,
so they’re worth spending time on if you
want to communicate accurately and clearly!
OK, you’re nearly done – one more level to go!
This is it – level five – the
hardest questions we could make.
Here are five sentences.
Four of these sentences have mistakes; one is
correct. Can you find the correct sentence,
and correct the mistakes in the other
four? Pause the video and try it now!
Difficult? Here’s a clue: you might need to
forget about the rules you know. These sentences
test your knowledge of exceptions and
unusual cases which don’t fit the general
rules about using articles.
Finished? Let’s look together.
Sentence one is correct. How do you explain this?
Normally, you don’t use articles with people’s
names. However, here, you’re talking about
multiple people who have the same name,
and contrasting them. ‘The Jamie I was telling you
about’ is specific, and needs ‘the’ to show this.
‘a Jamie in my class’ is one of many Jamies, but
not the Jamie we’re interested in right now.
In most cases, you say ‘the future’. In
sentence two, you’re talking about one of many
possible futures, so you use ‘a’. This
is common when you use an adjective
with ‘future’: ‘a bright future’,
‘a difficult future’, and so on.
Again, sentence three shows
you an exception to a rule.
You don’t usually use articles with days of the
week, but if you’re talking about which day a
specific date falls on, then you can use ‘a’.
You also need an article with days of the week
if you use certain adjectives,
like ‘following’ or ‘previous’.
Sentence four is a good example
of how inconsistent the ‘rules’
are here. You need ‘the’ for the hotel name, and
for the floor number, but you don’t use ‘the’
with the room number. Don’t try to
look for the logic – there isn’t any.
In sentence five, it would be easy
to think that the two noun phrases
– ‘first/second half of the year’
– should have the same article.
However, in this case there is some
logic to why they’re different.
In the first one, you say ‘a
terrible first half’ because,
although there’s only one first half of the
year, there are many ways it could have gone.
It could have been good, or amazing,
or average, or bad, and so on.
In the second one, there’s no adjective.
Here, you use regular rules – there’s
only one second half of the year, so you use
‘the’. The adjective makes all the difference.
That’s all. We hope you
found the lesson interesting!
See you next time!