I thinki it is time for another explanation of articles, this time highlighting “the“. Look at these two examples:

I could not see snow.
I could not see the snow.

The first means no snow fell. In other words, there was no snow on the ground.
The second means you were probably inside a building all day and did not look outside to see that snow was on the ground.

Popularity: 36%

What is wrong with the sentence “I went to party for new faces.”? Well nothing grammatically, but this is what one of my non-native English friends told me today. So I told him, “Really? What kind of faces did you get?”.

He looked at me strangely, and I realized he wasn’t sure what is wrong with the sentence. Well, let’s explain.

First, using the words “to party” is in the verb form. But that is not what he meant. What he meant to say was “to a party”. So you can see how adding an article changes the meaning of the sentence.

Second, using the words “for new faces” means that is the objective of the sentence; in other words it is the reason for going to the party. But, it is actually missing another verb, which in this case is “to meet”. So the revised portin of this sentence is “to meet new faces”.

So the revised sentence then reads “I went to a party to meet new faces.”

Popularity: 27%

What is the difference between using home vs. house in a sentence? It depends on the context, as we will see in a second. Today’s post explains this but also a quick lesson on pronunciation.

Knowing the difference between the letters l and r is difficult for Japanese. I often even see it written by my Japanese students incorrectly which tells me they do not even know the correct spelling, hence their pronunciation is incorrect too. Can you correctly say the following sentence (pick the correct word from the combinations seperated by a slash)

Soon we will have a/the festival of dolls where we decolate the homes/houses of/with girls.

The correct answer is:

Soon we will have the festival of dolls where we decorate the homes of girls.

Explanation: “houses with” means the physical place has girls placed on it. “homes of” is a more general meaning which is what is required in this sentence.

Popularity: 36%

Deciding when to use the article a or an instead of the article the is difficult for non-native English speakers. Take a look at these two examples that use a and the seperately to mean something different.

“My daughter seems to like a ski lift very much.” means generally, my daughter likes ski lifts.
“My daughter seems to like the ski lift very much.” means my daughter likes a specific ski lift, and the one described by the person who made this statement. It also means my daughter likes to ride the ski lift as opposed to walking up the mountain.

Popularity: 81%

There seems to be no end to the number of text books available to learn English as a second language. One book I recommend is English Grammar in Use 3rd Edition by Raymond Murphy (ISBN 0-521-5289-2). The same book can be purchased with a CD-ROM (ISBN 0-521-53762-2). However, be careful if just using a book without a native English speaker because a book can contain errors and a non-native English speaker may not be able to pick up on this mistake. Well, I found one in this book.

On page 33, exercise 16.2, problem 3 of English Grammar in Use, the original text as printed in the book is

Sarah got a job in factory. Five years later the factory closed down.

can you spot the error? It should be

Sarah got a job in a factory. Five years later the factory closed down.

When using articles, remember that if you are mentioning something for the first time you use a and then you use the in subsequent sentences to refer to the item. That is why a is used in the first sentence “Sarah got a job in a factory.” and the is used in the second sentence “Five years later the factory closed down“.

Popularity: 52%

Vote my blog!

私のブログに投票して下さい！

Most Popular in 'articles'

• a vs. the
• the
• the versus a
• a/an
• a vs. the
• "the" used to emphasize
• using articles
• the
• the
• home vs. house

Survey

What is your English level?

• Native English Speaker
• TOEIC > 900
• TOEIC 750 - 900
• TOEIC 600 - 749
• TOEIC < 600

View Results

 Loading ...

• Polls Archive

Music

Smooth Jazz