English Grammar: What are Definite Articles?

hello everyone my name's amber welcome to the second part of our three part series on articles in today's class we're going to look at though which is called the definite article so let's start with some example sentences Joe where is the newspaper Willy is going to the park Sylvia the cake you made is delicious in today's lesson we have two girls I'm going to teach you when to use them and how to use them in a sentence before we begin I want you to check your understanding of these terms singular noun plural noun and uncountable no so here are some examples hotel hotels accommodation so I'll give a quick explanation singular and plural nouns are countable nouns so I can say one hotel to hotels three hotels four hotels in contrast accommodation is an uncountable noun so I cannot say one accommodation to accommodations that would be incorrect now in English there are three types of articles in our first lesson we looked at a and an which is the indefinite article if you haven't seen that video I recommend that you watch it now the third part of this series we'll look at the 0 article which is when not to use an article but as I said the focus of today's lesson is the so when do we use the well we use them when your listener or your reader has an awareness of the noun so what do we mean by awareness well awareness is when the noun is specific the noun is obvious the noun is unique oh the noun is repeated now an easy way to remember this is if you take the first letters s oh you are which makes up the word sour sour is an adjective and it means the opposite of sweet so for example a lemon is sour so let's start with specific nouns let's take a look at this sentence I want the red apple now the red apple is specific because there's only one red apple so it's very clear which apple I want the red apple next we have obvious nouns I went to a wedding the bride was beautiful now there's a connection here between the bride and a wedding I used a wedding because it's the first time I'm giving this information so this is new information for you I went to a wedding now my next sentence I said the bride was beautiful now a wedding is an event where two people get married so bride and groom are words that are only used on the day of a wedding if you have a female person getting married then on the day of the wedding she is a bride in contrast for a male person on the day of his wedding he is a groom after the wedding the woman becomes a wife and the man becomes a husband so we can see from the context that it's obvious and clear that I'm talking about the bride at this wedding that I went to okay let's take a look at our third type a repeater known I bought a chair yesterday the chair is white now I'm talking about the same chair the first time I talked about the chair I need to use up a chair the second time I need to use the to show that I'm talking about the same chair okay let's move on to unique nouns so unique means one of a kind or only one of its kind so for example the Sun is bright today well can you see the moon now in our universe we have only one Sun and planet Earth has only one moon so the Sun and the moon for us are unique now there are some other uses that are related to unique names for example unique places so for example the Taj Mahal the pyramids we've got organizations so I work for the United Nations oceans or rivers the Nile the Pacific Ocean decades he was born in the 1990s now there are many many rules for the and you can learn about these and practice them on e to school so just to give you some more examples we use the when talking about currencies so that's different types of money for example the Euro the pound the yen per dollar we also use it for mountain ranges so the Alps for the Rockies and we use it for numbers as well the first the second the third and these type of numbers have a special name we call them ordinal numbers and we also use their for esthe adjectives or superlative adjectives so he is the tallest she is the shortest so as I said there are many rules for how to use them and you can learn these on e to school now let's look at the rule for what types of nouns so it's a very easy rule to remember we can use the with everything so that's fantastic news here are some examples we can say I bought the chair I bought the chairs I bought the furniture so he can use the servants singular plural and uncountable nouns okay now it's time for our first activity if you're on e to school I want you to do this activity directly on your computer just below this video if you're on YouTube you'll need some paper and a pen and your mind or I do highly recommend that you head on over to e to school and sign up it's free and you can do these activities online it's a really interesting way to learn and to practice all right your first activity we have a sentence I went to the pyramids you need to choose this noun type is it a specific obvious unique or repeaters now you have 20 seconds all right everyone how did you go let's take a look at the answer this is a unique now so the pyramids in Egypt are one of the wonders of the world and they are unique there are no other pyramids in the world exactly like them alright we've got another activity it's the same format you have 20 seconds this one is I bought a book the book is about flowers so choose the noun type okay here's the answer this is a repeated noun so with the first sentence I bought a book that's new information the second sentence I'm referring to the same book the book is about flowers so I'm adding some additional information okay next type you have 20 seconds all right how did you go here's the answer this one is a specific Nam so here there are only two shirts one pink shirt and one green shirt so if I say I want the green shirt I specifically want the green shirt so it's clear which shirt I want so it's fine for me to use the okay now one more time let's go again you've got 20 seconds all right here's the answer now you might have guessed it this is our last nom type and this is an obvious noun so I went to a movie the actor was fantastic so all movies have actors so it's clear from the context that I'm referring to the actor that I saw in the movie all right let's move on to our second part of the lesson which is the sentence how to use the in a sentence so here's the role that goes before a noun the chair or we can also put it before an adjective that's followed by a noun the green chair here are some sentences Silvia bought the chair so the airport the green chair the chair is heavy the green chair is heavy okay now it's time for our last activity of the lesson in this activity I want you to highlight the and the noun in these three sentences so for example what is the time okay you've got 30 seconds good luck okay here are the answers so our first sentence the dentist will he needs to go to the dentist next verb and shirt so Joe light the red shirt not the blue shirt and lastly summer went to versity today okay let's recap in today's class you learned when to use them and how to use them in a sentence here are the main points so we should use the when the listener or reader has an awareness of the noun and awareness is when the noun is specific obvious unique and repeated and the fantastic news is that verb can be used with all noun forms singular plural and uncountable as for the sentence the goes before a noun or before an adjective and a noun so we can have the chair the green chair okay if you're watching this video on YouTube you can subscribe to our channel or send us a like write a comment below or feel free to share this video with your friends who are learning articles or learning English okay so thank you for following along with me today I hope this video has been helpful and I look forward to seeing you in the third part of our lesson on articles have a lovely day bye bye [Music]

Channel: E2 English

Views: 14,611

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Id: GUUknobaPN0

Length: 15min 35sec (935 seconds)

Published: Mon May 13 2019