An Article on Articles

Student: I went to beach today and found shell, it was such beautiful day.

Teacher: you're missing three articles in this sentence.

Student: but why do I have to use them? Sentence is totally understandable.

Teacher: I don't know, no-one really knows, it's just how it is in English.

Have you ever got frustrated at learning English if your native language doesn't feature articles and thought they were unnecessary? Ever said this to a literature professor and had a book thrown at you in a fit of rage?

Maybe most English being spoken on this planet at the moment actually doesn't have many articles in it, because so many non-native speakers are speaking English across the world, perhaps one day the language will evolve to drop articles all together! But for now, in order to fit in with native speakers, you'll just have to learn to use articles, because that day is probably a millennia away.

Although today there are in fact contexts where articles are not used in English. Have you ever seen a news headline? That's right, articles were in fact missed out from headlines to save page space (and maybe ink?) in the early printing days, and this practise has continued today. It also gives a greater sense of urgency to headlines or statements.

So when and why do we use articles then? Articles are used in front of nouns. But why!? Well, articles provide English with a simple and quick way to distinguish whether a noun is a specific 'thing' or just a general 'thing'. Let's look at some sentences to illustrate:

1) I went to the school party this weekend

2) I went to a school party this weekend.

3) I went to school party this weekend.

If we ditched articles, and used sentence 3, we would have to explain further which party we went to, in 2 and 3, information is being given simply by using 'the' or 'a'.

By using 'the' in sentence 1, we are being given the information that there is one specific party that I went to.

By using 'a' in sentence 2, we are being given information that there were a number of different parties, and I went to one of them.

1) I need to water the plant in my house

2) I need to water a plant in my house

3) I need to water plant in my house

Again, we get more nuanced information from sentences 1 and 2, compared with 3. With sentence 3, yes, we get the basic information that 'I need to water plants', but with sentence 1, we know there is only one plant, one specific plant in my house, and in sentence 2, we know there are a number of plants, and I need to water one of them.

In these examples, using 'the' shows us that, even though there may be other 'things' involved (parties or plants) we are talking about a specific one.

When just 'a' is used, we know specificity is not important, the importance is not placed on one specific thing out of the things, but just on the general idea of the sentence.

I hope this has helped given a very brief introduction to the benefits of using articles, and perhaps helped you seen that the importance of learning to use articles appropriately isn't just because 'its supposed to be that way', or because natives speakers will process your sentences more easily. If you do struggle with articles though, I strongly suggest you get a copy of English Grammar In Use by Raymond Murphy, and revise the chapters on articles, and then do the practise exercises.

Have great day, read lots books, continue learning with website, English Burst.

Language Focus:

Glossary:

A definition has been given for each of the phrases, however, if you click on the phrase/word, you will be linked to online dictionaries which also give example sentences.

a millennia = a thousand years

to ditch someone/something = to leave or get rid of something/someone you no longer need or want

specificity = the quality of being specific, distinguished among others

Exercise 1:

Write out six sentences where the article(s) used are important for the meaning of the sentence.

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