Hello and welcome. In this
lesson, I will teach you the seven rules that you need to
know for using articles in English correctly. Articles are
the words ‘a’, ‘an’, and ‘the’. There is a final quiz at the
end of the lesson for you to test your understanding. OK, the first rule is about
where to use ‘a’ and where to use ‘an’. So rule number one is
use ‘a’ before a consonant sound, and ‘an’ before a vowel
sound. So in all of these words – you
see that they start with a consonant sound. Cat starts
with /k/, dog starts with /d/, boy with /b/,
girl with /g/, house with /h/ and tree with /t/. So we say ‘a cat’, ‘a dog’, ‘a
boy’, ‘a girl’, ‘a house’, ‘a tree’ etc. Notice that in
natural speech, we don’t say ‘a’, we say ‘uh’ – like ‘a
cat’. In this next set of words, you
see that, they all start with a vowel sound – apple starts with
/ae/, engineer starts with /e/, ice-cream with /ai/, old with
/o/, umbrella with /uh/. So we say ‘an apple’, ‘an
engineer’, ‘an ice-cream cone’, ‘an old woman’, ‘an umbrella’
and so on. In speech, we don’t
say ‘an’, we say /ən/. Let’s do a small exercise. You
see ten items on the screen. For each one, I want you to say
if you would use ‘a’ or ‘an’ before it. Stop the video,
think about it, then play the video again and check. OK here are the answers. Did
you get them all right? I want
to focus on items number seven to ten because these are a
little tricky. Number seven is
‘a university’ because even though ‘university’ starts with
the letter ‘u’ the first sound of the word is not a vowel
sound. We don’t say
/ooniversity/. We say /yoo-nə-
vər-si-ty/ so that first sound is a /y/ sound, which is a
consonant sound, so we say ‘a university.’ Number eight is similar. The
word ‘European’ starts with a /y/ sound, so ‘a European
tour.’ In number nine, the spelling
has an ‘h’ at the start but that ‘h’ is silent. We don’t
say /hau-ər/, we say /au-ər/. The first sound is an /au/
sound which is a vowel sound, so this is ‘an hour’. In the
same way, in number ten, we say MA. ‘M’ starts with an /e/
sound which is again a vowel sound, so ‘an MA in English’. OK let’s move on to rule number
two: Use ‘a’ and ‘an’ ONLY with singular, countable nouns. We say that a noun is countable
if we can count it – one, two, three, four etc. All of these words on the
screen are countable. We can
say one elephant, three cars, ten teachers, five hundred
onions and so on. Now if you
talk about one person or thing, like one elephant or one
car, then that’s called a singular noun and if you say
ten teachers or five hundred onions, those are called plural
nouns. Uncountable nouns cannot be
counted in this way. Nouns like
water, sugar, milk, love, anger, knowledge are some
examples. If you think about
it, you cannot say “I drank four waters” or “I want eight
milks”. To a person, you can
say “I love you” but you can’t say “I have five loves for you”
– that doesn’t make any sense. So these are all uncountable. Alright, so the rule is - you
can only use ‘a’ and ‘an’ if you’re talking about one person
or one thing. Let’s do another quick
exercise. Here are ten items
again. This time, you see ‘a’
or ‘an’ before the nouns, but some of these are wrong. They
should NOT have ‘a’ or ‘an’ before them. Stop the video,
identify the mistakes, then play the video again and check. OK, here are the answers. Number three is wrong because
‘shirts’ is a plural and you cannot use ‘a’ or ‘an’ before a
plural noun. Number five is
wrong because ‘happiness’ is uncountable, so again, ‘a’ or
‘an’ cannot be used there. The
same goes for number six – water is uncountable. Number
nine is wrong because ‘doctors’ is a plural – you can say ‘a
doctor’ but not ‘a doctors’. And finally, in number ten,
advice is an uncountable noun – so you cannot ask for ‘an
advice’. Now a quick note here: the
article ‘the’ can be used with all kinds of nouns – singular
or plural countable nouns, and uncountable nouns. OK, so let’s now talk about how
to choose between ‘a’ or ‘an’ and ‘the’. Here’s rule number three: Use
‘a’ or ‘an’ to talk about a person or thing unknown to your
listener. And use ‘the’ to talk
about a person or thing known to your listener. For example, “My sister has two
computers: a PC and a laptop. The PC is quite old but the
laptop is brand new.” I say ‘a
PC’ and ‘a laptop’ because that’s the first time I’m
mentioning the two computers. That is, until this point, they
are unknown to you, the listener. But now, I can say
“The PC is quite old but the laptop is brand new.” When I
say ‘the PC’, you know which one I’m talking about: my
sister’s PC. And the same thing
goes for the laptop. So the PC
and the laptop are now known to you. In English, ‘a’ and ‘an’ are
called indefinite articles because they talk about
something that the listener doesn’t know about. And ‘the’
is called the definite article because the listener knows what
you are referring to. Here’s another example: but
now, can you fill in the gaps? It’s pretty simple: the first
time I mention my tree, I’m going to say ‘a tree’: so, “I
planted a tree in my garden last year.” Now you know about
the tree, so I can say “The tree has now grown big.” Now this was easy because we
were talking about one tree. But what if I planted two,
three or four trees? Well you
know that we cannot use ‘a’ or ‘an’ with plurals. But we can
mention the exact number. We
can say “I planted four trees in my garden last year.” Or if
I don’t want to say the number, I can say “I planted some
trees.” And then I can say “The
trees have now grown big.” ‘The’ simply means that you
know which trees I’m talking about. In both of these examples, we
first introduce something with ‘a’ or ‘an’ or ‘some’ and then
we say ‘the’ because the listener knows about them. But
sometimes, you don’t need ‘a’ or ‘an’ because your listener
will automatically understand what you are referring to. For example, “Can you open the
window?” If we’re sitting in a
room, and if I say this to you, you will know which window I’m
talking about. Or if I said, “I
need to go back home. I think I
left the stove on.” That means,
the stove might still be burning, but which stove? Well,
you can understand from the situation that I mean the stove
in my house. But this isn’t always possible. For example, if I say “The man
is my boss.” You will ask –
“Which man is your boss?” It’s
confusing. But what about if I
say “The man in the grey suit is my boss.” you know which one
I’m talking about. So here, we
mention a noun with ‘the’ – ‘the man’ – and then we give
information to identify that noun – ‘in the grey suit’. Here’s one final example:
“Where’s the money I lent you last week?” So I start with
‘Where’s the money’ and then I say which money – ‘the money
that I lent you last week’. OK, let’s now talk about rule
number four: use ‘a’ or ‘an’ to talk about nonspecific things
or people. What does that mean? Well,
here’s an example: “Do you have a pencil?” If I ask you this
question, then it probably means I need a pencil to write
with. Now I say ‘a pencil’
because I mean ‘any pencil’ - I don’t care about any one
specific pencil. Compare this
to the next sentence: “Do you have the pencil that Kathy gave
you?” Here, I’m referring to a
specific pencil. Here’s another example, “I want
to buy an apartment” ‘An apartment’ means I haven’t
decided which apartment. Maybe
I haven’t even started looking for one, but I just know that I
want to buy some apartment. But
look at this next sentence: “I want to buy the apartment that
we visited.” So you know which
apartment I’m talking about. And here’s one last example,
“If you’re feeling sick, you should go and see a doctor.” Maybe you’re saying this to
give advice to a friend who isn’t feeling very well. Here,
we don’t mean go and see a specific doctor – we mean any
doctor. But let’s say your
friend takes your advice and goes to a doctor. When you see
your friend again, you might ask “What did the doctor say?” Why are we saying ‘the doctor’? Because we mean that specific
doctor who the friend visited. So, notice again that we use
‘a’ or ‘an’ when we’re talking about a person or thing in
general, and not a specific person or thing (for that, we
use ‘the’). Alright, let’s move on to rule
number five now: use ‘a’ or ‘an’ to mention the category or
type of a person or thing. To understand this, I have a
small exercise for you. All of
these sentences mention a category of type of a person or
thing. But they’re missing the
articles. I want you to put ‘a’
or ‘an’ in the correct place in each of these sentences. Stop
the video, think about your answers, then play the video
again and check. OK, in number one - “My car is
a 2011 Ford Fusion.” So here, I
mention ‘my car’ and then I tell you the model of the car –
‘2011 Ford Fusion’ – that is basically the type of car that
it is. So we use ‘a’ before it. Number two is “You can use your
TV as a laptop monitor.” Here,
the noun phrase ‘laptop monitor’ says what type of
thing your TV can be used as. In number three, “Jim’s
daughter is an intelligent girl.” We say what type of girl
she is – ‘an intelligent girl’. Number four is “I’d like to
become a member of your library.” After the verb
‘become’ you see that I’m saying what category I want to
belong to – ‘member of the library’. For this reason, ‘a
member’. We talk about professions in
the same way: “I’m a teacher.” (NOT “I’m teacher”). A person’s
profession says what category they belong to, or what type of
person they are. So, you need
to have ‘a’ or ‘an’ before the profession. Similarly, “He
worked as a cashier for two years.” So to mention a type or
category, use ‘a’ or ‘an’. Alright, let’s now turn to rule
number six. This rule is about
how to make generalizations. That is, how to talk generally
about a whole group or class of people or things. So rule number six is
generalize with plurals or uncountable nouns with no
article. On the screen, there are six
sentences. I’d like you to find
all the plural and uncountable nouns. Stop the video, do the
exercise, then play the video again and check. OK, in number one, there are
two plurals: ‘teachers’ and ‘students’. Here, we are not
talking about any one teacher or one student in particular. We’re saying that all teachers
should be friendly to all students. In number two, ‘dolphins’ is a
plural noun. We’re using it to
say, generally, that all dolphins are intelligent. In
number three, ‘horror movies’ is what I’m generalizing about. I’m saying I hate all horror
movies – not a particular one. In sentence number four,
‘coffee’ is an uncountable noun, and we use no article
before it because, again, we want to ask if Pablo likes
coffee in general. Number five
has two uncountable nouns in ‘exercise’ and ‘health’. We
don’t use any articles before them because this is a general
statement of fact or truth. And
finally, number six is the same kind of sentence – it also has
two uncountable nouns – ‘education’ and ‘life’. Now this is the common way of
generalizing. But there’s one
another way of doing it. With
countable nouns, you can generalize by using ‘a’ or ‘an’
with a singular countable noun to mean every single one – that
is every member of a group. For example: “A teacher should
be friendly to his or her students.” It has the roughly
same meaning as when we say ‘teachers’ but it’s slightly
different because it’s like saying “Every teacher should be
friendly to his or her students.” Here’s one more
example: “The dolphin is a very intelligent animal.” Again,
same meaning as saying “Dolphins” but we mean ‘every
dolphin’. So remember that this form –
generalizing with ‘a’, ‘an’ or ‘the’ can only be used with
singular countable nouns AND when we mean ‘every single
one’. So I cannot say “I don’t
enjoy watching a horror movie or the horror movie.” Here,
only the plural form is possible. It’s the same thing
with all the other sentences. OK, let’s now talk about rule
number seven: and that is where to use NO article. This is very important and this
is one place where mistakes are very common because there are
many situations where you should NOT use an article. In a
separate lesson we will focus on all of these situations but
here’s a short list. We use NO article in front of
proper nouns – that is names of people or places. We don’t say
‘a Steve’, ‘the Priya’ etc. We
just say their names without ‘the’. It’s the same thing for places. However, some place names have
‘the’ as part of the name. Such
as the United States, the United Kingdom and so on. With
these, of course, you must use ‘the’. We also usually use no article
with names of games and languages. Then there are many fixed
expressions that have no article – you have to learn
these through experience and practice to use them correctly. You see some of these on the
screen. It’s a good idea for
you to memorize as many of these as possible. Alright, if you’re ready, now
it’s time for a quiz to see if you can use articles correctly. On the screen, you see some
sentences with blanks in them. In each blank, I want you to
put ‘a’, ‘an’, ‘the’ or ‘no article’. That symbol – a zero
with a line through it is just to say ‘no article’. OK, stop
the video, try the exercise, then play the video and check. OK, here are the answers. You
can stop the video and check them with your answers if you
like. In the comments section,
let me know how you many got correct. If you’re not sure
about any of these, feel free to ask me in the comments and I
will help you out. Alright, I hope you enjoyed
this lesson. If you liked this
video, hit the like button. Don’t forget to subscribe to
this channel by clicking that subscribe button. And I will
see you in the next lesson soon.
